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JAN  ~'!)1917   I 


BR  252  .W85  1916 
Workman,  Herbert  B.  b.  1862. 
The  foundation  of  modern       j 
religion  |    j 


THE  FOUNDATION  OF 
MODERN    RELIGION 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

igib 

The  Foundation  of  -Modern 
Religion 

By  Herbert  B.  Workman,  D.  D.      Cloth Net  1.25 

Winning  the  World  for  Christ 

By  Bishop  Walter  R.  Lambuth.   'Cloth net  1.25 

igi4 

Personal  Christianity 

By  Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell,*    Cloth net  1,25 

The  God  We  Trust 

By  G.  A.  Johnston  Ross.      Cloth net  1.25 

igi2 

What  Does  Christianity  Mean  ? 

By  W.  H.  P.  Faunce.     Cloth „ net  1.25 

igil 

Some  Great  Leaders  in  the 
World  Movement 

By  Robert  E.  Speer.      Cloth net  1.25 

igio 

In  the  School  of  Christ 

By  Bishop  William  Fraser  McDowell.    Cloth,  net  1.25 
igog 

Jesus  the  Worker 

By  Charles  McTyeire  Bishop,  D.  D.     Cloth,  net  1.25 
igo8 

The  Fact  of  Conversion 

By  George  Jackson,  B.  A.    Cloth net  1.25 

ig07 

God's  Message  to  the  Human  Soul 

By  John   Watson   (Ian  Madaren).     The  Cole  Lectures 
prepared  but  yiot  delivered.      Cloth net  1.25 

igob 

Christ  and  Science 

By  Francis  Henry  Smith,  University  of  Virginia. 
Cloth ^ net  t.25 

'905 

The   Universal    Elements  of  the 
Christian  Religion 

By  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall.     Cloth net  1.25 

ig03 

The  Religion  of  the  Incarnation 

By  Bishop  Eugene  Russell  Hendrix.     Cloth. ..net  1.00 


The    Cole   Lectures  for  igi6 

delivered  before  Vandtrbilt  Uni-venity 

The  Foundation  of 
Modern   Religion 


A  Study  in  the  Task  and  Contri- 
bution of  the  Mediaeval  Church 


By 
HERBERT  B.  WORKMAN,  D.  D.,  LL.  D. 

Senator  London  University y  President  of  West- 
minster  Training  College^  London 


New  York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming     H.    Revell     Company 

London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  19 1 6,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

THE  late  Colonel  E.  W.  Cole  of  Nashville,  Ten- 
nessee, donated  to  Vanderbilt  University  the  sum 
of  five  thousand  dollars,  afterwards  increased  by 
Mrs,  E.  W.  Cole  to  ten  thousand,  the  design  and  con- 
ditions of  which  gift  are  stated  as  follows  : 

«  The  object  of  this  fund  is  to  establish  a  foundation 
for  a  perpetual  Lectureship  in  connection  with  the  Bib- 
lical Department  of  the  University,  to  be  restricted  in  its 
scope  to  a  defense  and  advocacy  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. The  lectures  shall  be  delivered  at  such  inter- 
vals, from  time  to  time,  as  shall  be  deemed  best  by  the 
Board  of  Trust ;  and  the  particular  theme  and  lecturer 
shall  be  determined  by  nomination  of  the  Theological 
Faculty  and  confirmation  of  the  College  of  Bishops  of 
the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South.  Said  lecture 
shall  always  be  reduced  to  writing  in  full,  and  the  man- 
uscript of  the  same  shall  be  the  property  of  the  Univer- 
sity, to  be  published  or  otherwise  disposed  of  by  the  Board 
of  Trust  at  its  discretion,  the  net  proceeds  arising  there- 
from to  be  added  to  the  foundation  fund,  or  otherwise 
used  for  the  benefit  of  the  Biblical  Department." 


,  Contents 


I.        The    Church    and    Its    Task    in  the 

Middle  Ages ii 

^  II.      The  Dawning  of  the  Missionary  Con- 
sciousness OF  THE  Church  .        .       55 

III.  The  Ideals  and  Antagonistic  Forces 

OF  THE  Middle  Ages         .        .        .101 

IV.  The  Dawning  of  the  Modern  Social 

Consciousness 141 

•^V.      The  Monks  and  Their  Work        .        .183 

VI.    Medieval     Educational    Ideals    and 

Methods 213 


LECTURE  I 

THE    CHURCH    AND    ITS 
TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


LECTURE  I 

THE  CHURCH  AND  ITS  TASK  IN  THE 
MIDDLE  AGES 


WITH  the  fall  of  the  Eoman  Empire  in  its 
western  section  we  enter  upon  a  new 
chapter  in  the  history  of  humanity.  The 
former  things  had  passed  away  ;  but  it  was  rather  the 
coming  of  a  new  hell  than  of  a  new  earth  or  a  new 
heaven  that  seemed,  at  first,  to  be  the  result.  An 
optimistic  faith  may  assert  that  it  was  necessary  to 
remove  the  things  that  were  shaken,  even  though  the 
removal  should  be  by  consuming  fires,  that  there 
might  be  laid  the  abiding  foundations  of  a  new  City 
of  God.  As  in  a  ruder  age  the  foundations  were  laid 
in  blood,  but  the  nature  of  the  superstructure  is  not 
so  clear.  One  thing,  however,  is  certain,  that  but  for 
the  Church,  foundations  and  city  alike  would  have 
been  of  the  devil. 

The  student  would  do  well  to  obtain  some  idea  of 
the  task  which  awaited  the  Church  in  the  six  cen- 
turies between  the  sack  of  Eome  and  the  conclusion 
of  the  wanderings  of  the  nations.  He  should  turn  to 
the  map  of  the  Empire  and  realize  its  meaning  ;  the 
majesty  of  its  unity,  the  diversity  of  nations  and  of 
tongues  which  had  lost  their  differences  in  the  proud 
consciousness  of  a  common  citizenship,  the  reality  of 
the  law  and  order  which  bound  the  ends  of  the  earth 

11 


12  THE  CHURCH 

to  one  common  centre,  the  peace  which  was  Eome's 
greatest  gift  to  a  suffering  world,  the  extent  and 
depth  of  her  civilization,  the  wide  diffusion  of  the 
arts,  culture,  philosophy,  and  science  of  the  old 
world.  The  darker  sides  of  the  picture  he  would  do 
well,  for  the  moment,  to  neglect ;  the  dark  super- 
stitions, the  religious  rottenness,  the  financial  ruin, 
especially  of  the  middle  classes,  the  limited  few  for 
whom  the  culture  and  civilization  existed,  the  vast 
hordes  of  slaves,  the  social  and  political  cancers 
which  had  eaten  out  the  heart  of  the  Empire.  These 
things  should  be  abstracted  ;  the  majesty  of  Rome  and 
her  civilization  is  so  incontestably  great  that  a  world 
in  which  that  force  was  lost,  or  even  in  danger  of 
being  lost,  seemed  to  Christian  and  heathen  alike  a 
ruined  world.  From  his  realization  of  the  greatness 
of  the  Empire,  and  of  the  debt  under  which  she  had 
laid  humanity,  let  the  reader  now  turn  to  the  results 
of  the  wanderings  of  the  nations.  In  place  of  the  old 
unity  of  speech,  religion,  law,  and  civilization,  we 
find  a  babel  of  languages,  a  chaos  of  conflicting 
barbarisms,  anarchy  written  large  on  all  life,  litera- 
ture dead,  art  unknown,  a  darkness  that  might  be 
felt  covering  the  face  of  the  deep. 

A  brief  survey  of  the  extent  of  the  ruin  is  necessary 
if  my  hearers  would  apprehend  the  greatness  of  the 
Church's  task.  The  invasion  of  Greece  by  the  West 
Goths  under  Alaric  (396)  began  the  series  of  move- 
ments which  resulted  in  the  breaking  up  of  the 
Western  Empire.  Driven  from  their  original  home 
round  the  Aral  by  the  pressure  of  the  Huns,  the 
West  Goths  swept  through  Thrace,  Greece,  and 
Illyricum,  and  under  Alaric  captured  Rome  itself 


ITS  TASK   IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  13 

(408).  The  death  of  Alaric  terminated  for  a  while 
their  onward  march  ;  but  this  deadly  blow  at  the 
heart  of  the  Empire  had  already  been  accompanied 
by  the  loss  of  outlying  provinces.  In  407  the 
Eomans  retired  from  Britain  ;  fifty  years  later  such 
civilization  as  there  they  had  established  was  swept 
away  before  the  inroads  of  Saxons,  Angles  and  Jutes. 
In  409  a  mixed  band  of  Vandals,  Suevians  and  Alans 
— the  last  a  race,  probably,  of  non- Aryan  origin — 
crossed  the  Rhine,  ravaged  Gaul,  and  occupied  Spain, 
though  many  of  the  towns  still  remained  in  Eoman 
hands.  In  413  the  West  Goths,  retiring  from  Italy, 
advanced  to  the  Pyrenees,  and  established  in  North- 
east Spain  a  kingdom  with  Barcelona  as  the  capital  ; 
in  Southern  Gaul  a  second  kingdom  round  Toulouse. 
From  these  centres  they  slowly  extended  their  do- 
minion over  almost  the  whole  of  the  peninsula.  In 
consequence  of  their  pressure,  the  Vandals  in  429 
abandoned  Spain  and  invaded  Africa.  Under  the 
leadership  of  Gaiseric  their  conquest  was  rapid  ;  the 
loss  of  Carthage  in  439  marked  the  beginning  of  the 
end  of  Eoman  dominion.  Thirty  years  later  Sar- 
dinia, Corsica  and  the  Balearic  Islands  surrendered 
to  the  Vandal  fleets. 

Northern  Gaul  had  already  fallen  before  the  Salian 
Franks.  This  German  tribe,  from  the  regions  be- 
tween the  Scheldt  and  Ehine,  throughout  the  fifth 
century  slowly  consolidated  their  conquests,  until  in 
507  Chlodovech  (Clovis)  drove  back  the  West  Goths 
beyond  the  Garonne.  Meanwhile  in  Southeast  Gaul 
another  Teutonic  tribe,  the  Burgundians,  established 
themselves  in  Savoy  (439)  ;  while  in  Italy  the  great 
Theodoric  founded   an  Ostrogothic  kingdom  which 


14  THE  CHURCH 

stretched  from  Pannonia  (Hungary)  to  Sicily  (489- 
493). 

Even  more  dreaded  in  their  ravages  than  Yandals, 
Ostrogoths,  or  Franks  were  the  Huns,  Asiatic  nomads 
akin  to  the  Turks,  who  in  the  fifth  century  estab- 
lished under  Attila  an  empire  which  reached  from 
the  Volga  to  the  Ehine,  from  the  Danube  to  the 
Baltic.  Their  defeat  at  Mery-sur -Seine  in  451  alone 
saved  Gaul  from  their  devastations  ;  while  their  in- 
vasion of  Italy,  in  452,  is  said  to  have  led  to  the 
foundation  of  Venice  by  the  Christian  fugitives, 
who,  after  the  sack  of  the  great  city  of  Aquileia, 
took  refuge  in  the  islands  of  the  lagoons. 

In  the  sixth  century,  a  temporary  revival  of  the 
Empire  under  Justinian  (576)  led  to  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  kingdoms  of  the  Vandals  and  Ostrogoths  ; 
but  other  races  were  ready  to  take  their  place.  In 
565  the  Lombards,  whose  original  home  was  probably 
near  the  Weser,  descended  into  Italy  from  Pannonia, 
and  within  four  years  won  for  themselves  the  coun- 
try which  still  bears  their  name. 

The  first  irruptions  of  barbarians  had  broken  upon 
the  Eoman  Empire  only  to  be  assimilated  by  its 
higher  civilization.  Many  of  them  were  already 
Arian  Christians;  others  were  speedily  converted. 
Not  so  with  the  hordes  that  in  later  years  swept 
across  the  continent  already  exhausted  by  earlier 
struggles,  and  whose  powers  of  assimilation  had  van- 
ished through  satiety.  In  the  East,  Slavonic  tribes, 
Chrobats,  Serbs,  Sorbs  and  others,  were  slowly  occu- 
pying what  had  once  been  imperial  soil,  bringing 
with  them  political  problems  that  have  dyed  the  soil 
of  Europe  with  blood  j  while  in  Northern  Europe, 


ITS  TASK  IN   THE  MIDDLE  AGES  15 

Slovenes.  Wends,  and  Czechs  were  establishing  them- 
selves in  their  permanent  homes,  attempting  to  hem 
in  Teutonic  expansion  on  the  East.  As  if  this  med- 
ley of  Teutonic  and  Slavonic  races  were  not  sufficient, 
we  find  in  the  seventh  century  non- Aryan  races  of 
Turanians  swarming  over  parts  of  Europe.  In  679 
the  Bulgarians  crossed  the  Danube  and  occupied 
their  present  kingdom.  Another  oriental  tribe,  the 
XJgrian  Magyars,  a  race  very  different  in  origin  from 
the  Huns,  with  whom  they  are  so  often  confused, 
were  for  many  years  the  terror  of  Europe.  But  in 
955,  after  their  great  defeat  at  Lechfeld  by  Otto  the 
Great,  they  settled  down  in  Pannonia,  a  district 
afterwards  known,  through  this  mistake  in  identifi- 
cation, as  Ungaria  or  Hungary. 

The  Turanian  invaders,  Magyars  and  Bulgarians, 
did  not  long  resist  the  influences  of  Christianity.  A 
more  serious  blow  to  the  Church,  the  effects  of  which 
are  still  felt  in  every  continent  of  the  Old  World, 
came  from  the  Semitic  East.  When  Gregory  the 
Great  died  (604)  Muhammad  (b.  570)  had  not  yet  be- 
gun to  believe  in  his  own  mission.  Serious  as  was 
the  outlook  for  the  Faith  in  the  West  at  the  dawn  of 
the  seventh  century  in  its  struggle  with  the  bar- 
barians, consolation  might  still  have  been  found  in 
the  vitality,  apparent  alas !  rather  than  real,  of  the 
churches  in  Egypt,  Syria,  Northern  Africa  and  the 
Mediterranean  basin  in  general.  Even  Spain,  which 
under  her  Visigothic  conquerors  had  embraced 
Arianism,  in  the  year  589  had  renounced  her  heresy 
at  the  council  of  Toledo  and  proclaimed  her  return  to 
the  Eoman  unity.  As  so  often  happens  it  was  in  the 
districts   of  seeming    strength  that  disaster  came. 


1 6  THE  CHURCH 

Eegions  in  which  for  centuries  the  Gospel  had  been 
supreme  were  lost  to  the  Cross,  and  the  original 
centres  of  Christianity  were  swallowed  up  in  the 
vortex  of  Islam.  There  is  no  evidence  that  Muham- 
mad contemplated  the  extension  of  his  creed  beyond 
the  confines  of  Arabia.  Immediately  after  the  death 
of  the  prophet,  Islam  had  to  fight  for  its  very  exist- 
ence ;  yet  such  was  the  spell  it  cast  over  its  reluctant 
converts  that  before  a  century  was  completed,  Syria, 
North  Africa,  Egypt,  the  most  fertile  districts  of 
Spain,  exchanged  their  Christianity  for  the  creed  of 
their  Muslim  masters. 

Christianity  was  assailed  along  its  whole  frontier, 
and  in  the  East  the  ruin  was  complete.  Christian 
indifference  and  discord  were  no  match  for  the  new 
fanaticism.  ^'The  sword,"  cried  Muhammad,  *'is 
the  key  of  heaven  and  of  hell  ;  a  drop  of  blood  shed 
in  the  cause  of  God,  a  night  spent  in  arms,  is  of  more 
avail  than  two  months  of  fasting  or  prayer ;  whoso- 
ever falls  in  battle  his  sins  are  forgiven,  at  the  last 
day  his  wounds  shall  be  resplendent  as  vermilion 
and  odoriferous  as  musk."  ^^Eemember,"  said  the 
Caliph,  Abu  Bekr,  to  his  Syrian  army,  ^'that  you 
are  always  in  the  presence  of  God,  on  the  verge  of 
death,  in  the  assurance  of  judgment,  and  the  hope  of 
Paradise.  When  therefore  you  fight  the  battles  of 
the  Lord,  quit  you  like  men."  At  the  siege  of  Da- 
mascus, Khalid,  the  ''Sword  of  God,''  was  urged  to 
rest.  *'  O  Derar,"  he  replied,  as  he  mounted  a  fresh 
horse,  ''we  shall  rest  in  the  world  to  come ;  he  that 
labours  to-day  shall  rest  to-morrow."  When  Mu- 
hammad proclaimed  war  on  the  Emperor  Heraclius, 
some  of  the  more  timid,  who  had  not  yet  discerned 


ITS  TASK   IN   THE  MIDDLE  AGES  1 7 

SO  clearly  as  their  leader  the  splendid  weakness  of 
the  Eomans,  pleaded  the  intolerable  heat :  *  ^  Hell  is 
much  hotter,''  cried  the  indignant  Prophet,  as  he  ex- 
communicated the  cowards.  *' Paradise  is  before 
you,  the  Devil  and  hell  fire  in  your  rear,"  echoed 
his  generals  at  the  fatal  battle  of  the  Yermuk  (G34). 

Such  promises  and  threats  cried  havoc  and  let 
slip  the  dogs  of  war.  Eeligion  became  an  intrepid 
fanaticism ;  a  heaven  of  black-eyed  houris,  the 
reward  of  carnage.  Before  his  death  Muhammad 
had  seen  the  conquest  of  Arabia ;  under  his  im- 
mediate successors  Arabia  threatened  to  overwhelm 
the  world.  In  the  ten  years  of  the  reign  of  Omar, 
the  Saracens  conquered  thirty-six  thousand  cities 
and  castles,  and  destroyed  four  thousand  churches. 
^'The  Arabs  dwell,"  sings  one  of  their  poets,  ''be- 
neath the  shadow  of  their  lances  ;  they  cook  their 
food  upon  the  ashes  of  conquered  towns."  Within  a 
few  years  their  zeal  had  crushed  Persia  (633-642)  and 
overthrown  the  religion  of  Zoroaster.  In  the  North, 
Khalid  swept  all  before  him,  captured  Damascus, 
Jerusalem,  and  Antioch,  and  drove  back  Heraclius 
and  his  veterans  in  flight  to  Constantinople  (686  ?). 
In  the  West,  Amr  (Amrou),  by  the  help  of  the  Coptic 
Christians,  overran  Egypt,  turned  Memphis,  the  city 
of  ancient  Pharaohs,  into  a  solitude,  and  captured 
Alexandria,  the  first  city  in  the  world  for  trade,  the 
second  in  population. 

The  ambition  or  selfishness  of  Eome  might  pos- 
sibly view  with  indifference  the  fall  of  the  three 
ancient  patriarchates  that  had  so  often  disputed  her 
preeminence  and  opposed  her  claims.  But  when 
Okba  swept  Africa  from  the  Nile  to  the  ocean  (669- 


1 8  THE  CHURCH 

683),  while  Hasan  delivered  Carthage  to  the  flames 
(698),  she  realized  the  danger  at  her  own  doors. 
^' Great  God,"  cried  Okba,  as  he  spurred  his  horse 
into  the  Atlantic,  '*if  my  course  were  not  stopped 
by  this  sea  I  would  go  on  to  the  unknown  kingdoms 
of  the  West,  preaching  the  unity  of  Thy  holy  name, 
and  putting  to  the  sword  the  rebellious  nations  who 
worship  any  other  God  than  Thee."  The  ocean  was 
impassable,  so  the  Saracens  turned  aside  into  Spain, 
intent  like  Hannibal  on  the  conquest  of  Europe  and 
Eome  from  the  West.  By  the  fatal  victory  of  Salado 
(Guadalete)  (711),  the  Gothic  monarchy  was  ruined  ; 
Boderic,  the  last  ignoble  successor  of  Alaric,  perished 
in  his  flight ;  and  Spain,  which  had  resisted  for  two 
hundred  years  the  arms  of  the  Eomaus,  yielded  her- 
self in  a  few  months  to  the  victorious  Saracens.  Only 
in  the  valleys  of  the  Pyrenees  and  amid  the  moun- 
tains of  the  Asturias  could  a  remnant  of  the  Goths 
maintain  their  faith  and  freedom,  and  under  the  lead- 
ership of  Pelayo  (+737)  repulse  the  forces  of  Islam, 
and  lay  the  foundation  of  the  future  kingdom  of 
Spain. 

By  the  end  of  the  first  century  after  the  Hegira  * 
the  empire  of  the  caliphs  was  the  greatest  empire  on 
the  face  of  the  earth.  They  reigned  by  the  right  of 
conquest  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Indus ;  in  the  West, 
they  threatened  to  cross  the  Alps,  and  conquer  the 
Eternal  City  ;  in  the  East,  Constantinople  had  already 
suffered  two  sieges  at  their  hands. '^    Muhammad  had 

^The  Hegira,  or  Flight  of  Muhammad,  from  Mecca  to  Medina, 
took  place  September  20,  622.  But  the  Arabs  date  from  July 
16th. 

2  lat,  674-676 ;  2d,  716-718. 


ITS  TASK  IN   THE  MIDDLE  AGES  19 

declared  war  on  the  human  race,  and  the  human  race 
and  the  Christian  religion  seemed  destined  to  be 
crushed  by,  his  sword.  The  world  must  make  peace  ^ 
with  the  stronger,  they  must  surrender  to  Allah. 
*'  Ye  Christian  dogs,"  cried  Khalid,  ''  ye  know  your 
option,  the  Quran,  the  tribute,  or  the  sword."  All 
along  the  coast  of  Africa,  where  once  five  hundred 
sees  had  gloried  in  the  faith  of  Augustine  and 
Cyprian,  the  light  of  the  Gospel  was  totally  ex- 
tinguished. Church  bells  rang  no  more  ;  in  the 
early  dawn,  instead  of  the  chanting  of  priests,  the 
cry  of  the  mueddhin  rose  in  the  sleeping  cities : 

God  is  most  great,  God  is  most  great, 
I  testify  there  is  no  God  but  Allah. 
I  testify  Muhammad  is  God's  messenger, 
Come  ye  and  pray,  come  ye  and  pray ; 
For  prayer  is  better  than  sleep. 
There  is  no  God  but  Allah. 

In  Spain,  though  toleration  and  half  the  churches 
had  been  granted  to  the  Christians,  six  hundred 
mosques  in  the  royal  city  of  Cordoba  proclaimed  the 
dominant  religion.  In  718  the  Arabs  crossed  the 
Pyrenees,  and  in  successive  swarms  spread  over  the 
southern  regions  of  France.  But  Abd-ar-rahman, 
their  general,  was  not  satisfied  with  these  narrow 
limits.  In  731  he  invested  Aries,  and  overspread 
Burgundy  as  far  as  Lyons  and  Besan^on,  slaughter- 
ing the  Christians  by  thousands,  and  delivering  their 
churches  to  the  flames.  In  further  campaigns  he 
would  carry  the  Quran  to  the  Northern  Ocean,  and 

*  Islam  and  3fuslim  are  the  infinitive  and  participle  of  the 
causative  form  of  the  verb  slm,  which  connotes  peace. 


20  THE  CHURCH 

teach  its  doctrines  to  the  dwellers  in  Ultima  Thule. 
But  iu  a  seven  days'  fight  between  Tours  and 
Poictiers,  which  changed  the  history  of  the  world 
(October  732),  Charles  the  Hammer  (Martel)  and  his 
Franks  drove  the  nations  of  Africa  and  Asia  before 
him  in  headlong  flight,  and  wrested  Southern  France 
from  their  grasp.  The  Christianity  of  Europe  was 
saved  ;  never  again  would  the  caliphs  have  such  an 
opportunity.  The  victors  had  been  vanquished  by 
the  splendour  and  luxury  of  their  conquests ;  their 
great  empire  was  falling  to  pieces  by  its  sheer  weight. 
Unity  was  lost  in  a  loose  confederation  ;  fanaticism 
extinguished  in  the  greater  hatred  of  contending 
dynasties,  and  in  the  bitter  schism,  which  has  rent 
Islam  to  this  day,  of  Sunnee  and  Shiah. 

In  the  West  the  Saracen  attacks  were  henceforth 
rather  the  raids  of  pirates  than  the  organized,  far- 
reaching  schemes  of  the  early  caliphs.  Nevertheless, 
the  light  corsairs  of  the  Saracens  swept  the  Mediter- 
ranean, reduced  Palermo  (831),  and  gradually  con- 
quered the  whole  of  Sicily  (827-878).  Throughout  the 
island  Christianity  was  almost  uprooted.  In  846  the 
Arab  fleets  entered  the  Tiber  and  sacked  the  churches, 
destroying  the  sepulchre  of  St.  Paul,  and  breaking 
up  the  huge  bronze  coffin  in  which,  according  to  uni- 
versal belief,  lay  the  mortal  remains  of  St.  Peter. 
A  more  formidable  attack  in  849  would  have  es- 
tablished their  power  in  the  heart  of  the  Christian 
world,  had  not  the  vigilance  of  Pope  Leo  IV  formed 
an  alliance  of  the  maritime  republics  of  Gaieta, 
Naples,  and  Amalfi.  By  the  naval  battle  of  Ostia 
and  the  storm  which  completed  the  work  of  destruc- 
tion, Eome  was  delivered  from   their  dread.     The 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  21 

Papacy  was  saved  ;  but  the  freedom  of  Italy  was  yet 
to  be  wrought.  The  Greeks,  the  Franks,  aud  the 
Lombards  contended  together  for  the  mastery,  while 
Saracen  fleets  put  out  annually  from  Palermo  and 
ravaged  impartially  the  territories  of  all. 

The  West  had  scarcely  begun  to  recover  from  the 
first  shock  of  the  barbarians,  succeeded  by  its  strug- 
gle with  the  Saracens,  when  the  thirst  for  plunder 
woke  again  in  North  and  East.  Swarms  of  Vi- 
kings, secure  in  their  command  of  the  sea,  descended 
on  every  coast,  swept  up  the  rivers  to  burn  the  in- 
land towns,  and  destroyed  with  indifferent  ferocity 
church,  castle,  monastery  and  village.  For  three 
centuries  piracy  became  the  common  means  of  live- 
lihood for  a  whole  nation.  *' Deliver  us,  O  Lord," 
ran  the  litany  of  the  times,  ' '  from  the  frenzy  of  the 
Northmen."  This  was  echoed  in  Germany  and  Italy 
by  a  similar  prayer  :  "  Deliver  us,  O  Lord,  from  the 
frenzy  of  the  Huns  "  (Magyars).  Heathenism  in  the 
ninth  and  tenth  centuries  hurled  itself  in  a  last  des- 
perate rally  on  the  Christian  world.  Thor,  the 
favourite  God  of  the  wilder  Norwegians,  and  Woden, 
in  whose  worship  we  recognize  the  more  cultured 
notes  of  the  south  Germanic  races,  and  misshapen 
Asiatic  monsters  struggled  to  overthrow  the  Cross. 

II 

The  changes  produced  by  the  inrush  of  the  bar- 
barians were  more  than  territorial.  Many  of  the 
earlier  invaders,  it  is  true,  of  whom  Theodoric  the 
Goth  may  be  taken  as  the  noblest  example,  had  been 
anxious  to  rule  the  Eoman  Empire  rather  than  to 
destroy  it.     They  were  conscious  still  of  the  majesty 


22  THE  CHURCH 

of  Eoman  civilization.  The  rude  peoples  whom  they 
led  were  still  under  the  spell  of  her  influence  ;  they 
were  prepared,  at  least  nominally,  to  adopt  her 
name,  her  religion,  and  her  civilization,  with  such 
changes  as  might  be  necessary  to  meet  their  needs. 
The  result  was  seen  in  the  speedy  if  superficial  con- 
version of  such  earlier  invaders  of  the  Empire  as  the 
Vandals  and  Franks.  Their  kings  realized  the  need 
of  consolidating  their  rule  by  assimilating  the  re- 
ligion and  civilization  of  the  lands  they  had  con- 
quered. Possibly  they  might  have  succeeded  in 
thus  saving  the  older  civilization  had  they  not  in 
their  turn  been  exposed  to  attacks  from  new  swarms. 
Successive  onslaughts  of  the  barbarians  swept  away 
not  only  Eoman  rule,  but  Eoman  civilization  j  this 
last  in  some  lands,  as  for  instance  France,  partially 
only,  in  others,  for  instance  Eugland,  absolutely  and 
forever,  unless  indeed  the  contention  of  some  modern 
historians  be  correct  that  Loudon  persisted  through 
all  the  changes,  never  losing  her  Eoman  character 
and  importance.  Eoman  law  gave  place  to  the 
customs  of  the  tribes ;  Eoman  schools  survived  only 
in  a  few  sheltered  towns  ;  the  old  Eoman  unity  of 
speech  gave  place  to  a  babel  of  languages  ;  classic 
culture  became  lost  for  centuries ;  above  all  the 
*'Pax  Eomana,"  the  greatest  gift  which  Eome  had 
conferred  on  humanity,  was  exchanged  for  the  con- 
fused struggle  of  tribe  with  tribe.  Life  everywhere, 
in  all  its  forms,  whether  social  or  political,  tended  to 
slip  back  into  barbarism.  But  for  the  Church  the 
ruin  would  have  been  comjjlete. 

When  in  482  the  terrible  Attila,  after  his  defeat  by 
the  Visigoths  at  the  battle  of  the  Catelaunian  fields 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  23 

(Chalons),  fluDg  himself  on  Italy,  the  Eomans,  in 
their  despair,  sent  the  foremost  of  their  citizens  to 
implore  the  Hun  to  make  peace  and  withdraw. 
With  their  senators  they  associated  the  venerable 
Leo,  their  bishop.  The  mission  was  successful  ; 
Attila  and  his  Mongolian  hordes  retired  to  Pan- 
nonia.  Later  legends  have  claimed  all  the  credit 
of  this  deliverance  for  the  bishop  of  Eome.  Leo  is 
represented,  for  instance,  in  the  paintings  of  Eaffaele, 
as  standing,  with  the  great  figures  of  St.  Peter  and 
St.  Paul  at  his  back,  menacing  with  drawn  sword 
and  unutterable  woes  the  trembling  Hun.  Which 
things  are  an  allegory.  In  Leo,  for  whose  person 
Attila  probably  felt  little  more  reverence  than  for 
that  of  his  fellows  in  the  deputation,  we  salute  the 
representative  of  the  force  which  alone  could  subdue 
the  barbarian.  For  we  may  boldly  claim  that  the 
Church  saved  civilization  ;  but  for  her  missions  and 
her  influence  this  would  have  perished.  To  the 
same  effect  is  the  judgment  of  Harnack :  *'N"o 
flight  of  imagination  can  form  any  idea  of  what 
would  have  come  over  the  ancient  world  had  it  not 
been  for  the  Church."  * 

For,  save  in  the  Church,  where  shall  we  find,  in 
the  general  welter  of  the  times,  a  force  sufficient  to 
save  civilization  ?  Shall  we  turn  to  the  new  nations 
— Franks,  Huns,  Northmen  and  the  like  ?  Or,  since 
this  is  unthinkable,  shall  we  fall  back  upon  the  cul- 
ture introduced  into  Europe  by  the  Arabs  ;  the  arts 
and  sciences  which  we  owe  to  their  inspiration? 
But  unless  we  misread  the  whole  history  of  the 
West,  Eastern  culture  must  always  have  formed  an 
*  "Expansion  of  Christianity,"  Vol.  I,  p.  158. 


24  THE  CHURCH 

alien  element,  the  mark,  at  best,  of  Saracen  con- 
querors. Its  philosophy,  potent  though  it  became 
as  an  heretical  force  in  the  schools  of  Toledo  and 
Paris,  was  too  essentially  Eastern  in  its  pantheism  to 
influence  the  West.  As  one  of  the  elements  absorbed 
by  the  awakening  intelligence  of  Europe,  Saracen 
culture  had  its  value,  though  this  has  often  been 
exaggerated  ;  as  a  foundation  for  Western  civiliza- 
tion and  moral  life  it  was  impossible.  Nor  shall  we 
rest  on  firmer  ground  if  we  seek  for  our  sources  of 
civilization  in  the  scanty  survival  of  the  old  Greek 
and  Eoman  culture. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  tragedy  of  the  Church's 
task  lay  in  the  fact  that  not  only  had  the  political 
framework  of  life  perished,  but  the  very  foundations 
of  the  older  civilization  had  crumbled  away.  In  the 
West  the  fall  of  Sellenism  was  complete.  By  Hellen- 
ism we  understand  that  subtle  pervasive  influence  of 
Greek  thought  and  life,  that  emphasis  of  a  Greek 
Jcultur,  which,  from  the  days  of  Alexander  the  Great 
until  the  sack  of  Eome,  had  been  the  most  potent 
force  in  the  higher  life  of  the  world.  In  its  earlier 
days  Hellenism  had  come  into  conflict  with  the  racial 
and  sacerdotal  exclusiveness  of  Judaism,  and,  in  the 
upshot,  Judaism  had  been  worsted.  The  Christian 
Church  had  been  permeated  with  Hellenic  thought ; 
its  theology  interwoven  with  Hellenic  strains.  But 
that  which  the  Jew  could  not  succeed  in  doing  the 
Barbarian  accomplished.  Slowly  but  surely  Greek 
thought  perished  both  in  the  Western  Empire  and 
from  the  Western  Church,  and  the  large  compre- 
hensive outlook  of  Greek  theology  became  lost  in  a 
rigid  Latin  legalism.     Here  and  there  we  find  a  soli- 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  25 

tary  witness  to  the  old  culture — John  Scotus  Eriugena 
in  the  ninth  century,  Grosseteste  in  the  twelfth — but 
for  all  practical  purposes  they  may  be  disregarded. 
The  chief  part  of  Greek  culture  which  survived  were 
a  few  fragments  of  somewhat  hard  and  formal  logic, 
and  on  these  dry  bones  early  Scholasticism  was 
driven  to  subsist  until  the  later  rediscovery  of 
Aristotle. 

May  we  note  in  passing  one  evidence  of  the  de- 
struction of  Greek  culture?  An  essential  part  of 
Hellenism  had  been  the  care  of  the  body,  with  its 
motto  the  mens  sana  in  corpore  sano.  In  every  Hellen- 
ized  town,  even  in  Jerusalem  itself,  we  find  the  Greek 
gymnasium,  the  centre  and  symbol  of  the  Greek  value 
of  the  body  as  such.  The  bath,  and  all  the  conse- 
quent cleanliness  of  home  and  person,  was  part  of 
this  culture,  and  had  passed  over  to  the  Romans  as 
an  essential  part  of  their  life.  But  all  this  most  valu- 
able side  of  Hellenism  was  now  destined  to  be  lost. 
In  place  of  the  exaltation,  oftentimes  excessive,  of  the 
worth  of  the  body  we  find  its  depreciation  : — ''this 
vile  body,"  though  a  mistranslation,  is  a  fairly  accu- 
rate description  of  early  mediaeval  thought.  In  place 
of  the  gospel  of  cleanliness  we  find  the  squalor  and 
filth  of  early  Monasticism.  We  may  add  that  this 
lost  conception  of  the  value  of  cleanliness  and  the 
worth  of  the  body,  so  prominent  a  feature  in  Greek 
culture,  was  never  recovered  by  the  mediseval  Church. 
Great  and  many  were  her  accomplishments,  but  this 
part  of  her  task  she  left  severely  alone,  or,  rather,  she 
showed  herself  altogether  unconscious  of  any  loss 
sustained. 

If  from  Hellenism  we  turn  to  Eoman  civilization 


26  THE  CHURCH 

we  find  a  similar  if  lesser  destruction.  The  extent  of 
the  survival  of  the  Eoman  culture  has  often,  it  is  true, 
been  underestimated.  In  the  darkest  days  of  barba- 
rian triumph  there  were  still  here  and  there,  in  Italy 
at  least,  Roman  schools,  and  the  traditions  of  Eoman 
culture  and  law.  These,  like  Eoman  roads,  Eoman 
aqueducts  and  bridges,  were  built  too  solidly  to  be 
swept  away  easily.  But  though  surviving,  their  ef- 
fect upon  the  life  of  the  surrounding  barbarians  was 
but  slight.  We  may  take,  for  instance,  Eoman  law, 
the  codification  of  which  by  Justinian  was  the  great 
legacy  of  the  later  Empire.  The  key  to  the  existence 
of  Lombard  cities  and  Lombard  schools  lies  in  the 
continued  recognition  through  the  darkest  ages  of  the 
old  Eoman  system  of  jurisprudence.  But  the  effect 
of  Eoman  Law  upon  barbarians  was  almost  nil  until 
they  had  been  Christianized.  Only  when  the  age  of 
iron  gave  place  to  the  first  rude  attempts  at  order 
could  Eoman  Law  reassert  herself.  Then  indeed,  as 
we  shall  see  later,  her  influence  was  tremendous,  both 
upon  the  common  law  of  the  new  nations,  and  espe- 
cially in  the  formation  of  the  Canon  Law  of  the 
Church.  But  this  influence  was  secondary,  not 
causal,  the  result  of  a  suitable  environment  prepared 
by  the  Church.  Without  the  civilization  fostered 
by  the  Church  the  nations  would  never  have  turned 
from  their  rude  codes  to  the  more  scientific  jurispru- 
dence of  Justinian.  For  the  question  of  the  influence 
of  Eoman  Law  resolves  itself  into  the  struggle  be- 
tween the  surviving  Eomanized  and  Christianized 
civic  communities  and  the  surrounding  barbarian 
and  heathen  populations  with  their  own  codes.  But 
for  Christianity  the  struggle  would  have  been  unto 


ITS  TASK   IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  2^ 

death ;  it  was  really  the  Christianity  of  the  towns 
that  won  over  the  country  pagans,  and  finally  im- 
pressed upon  them  the  need  of  law. 

This  reasoning  is  still  more  correct  when  applied 
to  Eoman  schools  and  all  the  culture  that  Eoman 
schools  might  be  supposed  to  have  fostered.  The 
task  of  the  Church  in  the  matter  of  mediaeval  educa- 
tion is  of  such  importance  as  to  demand  a  lecture  in 
itself.  For  the  present  it  will  suffice  to  note  that,  as 
might  be  expected,  here  and  there  the  traditions  of 
the  old  schools  lingered  on,  in  a  few  cases  even  the 
actual  schools  themselves.  But  the  influence  of  this 
old  culture  as  a  civilizing  element  was  lost,  until  the 
Church  had  done  the  spade-work  which  alone  made 
it  fruitful. 

The  loss  of  Eoman  schools  and  Eoman  education 
was  not  so  serious  as  the  loss  of  Eoman  discipline. 
With  the  incoming  of  the  barbarian  there  passed 
away  out  of  Europe  all  that  solidarity,  of  which  the 
basis  was  the  consciousness  of  unity  in  the  one  great 
empire,  the  result  the  great  discipline  of  life  which 
had  won  Eome  her  marvellous  triumph.  In  place  of 
the  Empire,  with  its  ordered  life  and  its  emphasis  on 
the  unity  of  every  part,  we  have  the  struggle  of  in- 
numerable clans  whose  only  consciousness  of  unity 
was  that  which  came  from  a  common  instinct  of  de- 
struction. The  most  marvellous  thing  in  the  old 
world  had  been  the  enormous  assimilative  power  of 
Latin  culture  and  Eoman  institutions,  by  which 
whole  races  of  barbarians  had  been  Eomanized  and 
united.  But  that  assimilative  power  was  now  ex- 
hausted, while  barbarism  had  burst  upon  the  world 
With  a  positive  energy  for  creating  the  local  and  un- 


28  THE  CHURCH 

assimilated.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  as  we  shall  see 
later,  we  find  a  complex  mass  of  diverse  laws  and 
customs,  written  and  unwritten,  Eoman,  Gothic, 
ecclesiastical,  all  struggliug  together,  or  dividing  out 
their  several  spheres  just  as  if  no  such  thing  as  unity 
either  in  administration  or  ideal  was  either  desirable 
or  possible.  Every  attempt  to  give  unity  by  political 
means,  on  the  part  of  such  great  leaders  as  Charles 
the  Great,  always  failed  when  the  strong  hand  was 
removed.  In  the  Church  alone  could  the  warriug 
clans  find  the  reality  of  unity ;  through  the  Church 
alone  did  the  political  unities  that  were  attempted 
find  a  shadowy  basis  of  fact  in  the  concept  of  a  Holy 
Eoman  Empire. 

We  have  claimed  that  the  idea  of  fiuding  the  great 
new  civilizing  factor  in  the  life  of  the  barbarian  na- 
tions is  unthinkable.  The  statement  needs  a  certain 
qualification.  In  the  successive  swarms  of  barbari- 
ans the  keenest  eye  can  detect  little  but  savagery, 
mitigated  by  frankness  and  bravery,  and  by  a  certain 
absence  of  the  corruiDtions  of  the  dying  Eoman  world. 
Nevertheless  the  new  nations  formed  a  fine  soil  for 
the  growth  of  a  new  culture ;  but  the  new  culture 
was  in  every  case  planted  there  by  the  Church,  in  no 
case  the  product  of  internal,  latent  powers.  We  may 
take  as  an  illustration  the  case  of  the  Northmen.  At 
the  commencemeut  of  the  niuth  century  they  were 
still  the  terror  and  scourge  of  Christendom.  Their 
drinking  cups  were  oftentimes  human  skulls ;  their 
amusement  to  throw  children  into  the  air  and  catch 
them  on  the  points  of  their  spears.  Human  sacri- 
fices were  not  unknown.  Of  one  king  we  are  told 
that  he  purchased  long  life  by  offering  one  of  his  sons 


ITS  TASK   IN   THE  MIDDLE  AGES  29 

to  Woden.  But  by  the  end  of  the  tenth  century  the 
Norman  pirates  had  forgotten  their  native  land,  its 
language  and  rough  customs,  and  abandoned  the  wor- 
ship of  Woden  for  that  of  ''  the  white  Christ."  The 
result  was  marvellous,  both  in  the  facts  themselves 
and  in  the  rapidity  of  their  accomplishment.  The 
new  faith  chastened  and  transformed  into  the  begin- 
nings of  a  new  poetry  the  dreamy  temperament  which 
had  thought  of  the  thunder  as  the  hammer  of  Thor, 
and  heard  in  the  wind  the  war-cry  of  Woden.  Hence 
it  is  in  Normandy  that  we  first  see  the  breaking  of 
light  in  the  dark  ages.  There  the  new  and  nobler 
spirit  became  a  national  enthusiasm.  The  adventur- 
ous spirit  of  the  Northmen  led  them  to  send  forth  a 
gallant  procession  of  soldiers  of  the  Church.  The 
deeds  of  daring  of  their  forefathers  were  repeated  on 
a  nobler  stage.  Cruelty  which  had  thought  nothing 
of  death  became  changed  into  a  heroism  that  counted 
life  itself  to  be  but  part  of  the  necessary  renuncia- 
tion of  the  soldiers  of  Jesus.  Monasteries  arose  in 
the  densest  forests,  while  the  schools  of  Bee  and 
Avranches  might  well  be  called,  for  a  while,  the  uni- 
versities of  the  West.  Thus  the  energy  of  the  Yiking 
pirates,  at  the  call  of  the  Church,  aroused  Europe 
from  the  sleep  of  the  Dark  Ages,  and  ushered  in  a 
new  dawn.  But  the  force  that  made  for  civilization 
was  the  transforming  touch  of  the  Church. 

One  other  matter  should  be  noticed  in  this  connec- 
tion. The  barbarian  invasions  roughly  divide  them- 
selves into  two  distinct  periods,  in  both  of  which  it 
was  a  life  and  death  struggle  for  civilization.  But 
the  first  conflict  would  have  been  fatal  had  it  not 
been  that  to  some  extent  the  barbarians  had  become 


30  THE  CHURCH 

ChristiaDS  before  they  burst  in  upon  the  Empire. 
Europe  has  not  sufficiently  recognized  the  debt  she 
owes  to  the  intrepid  missionary  Ultilas  (+380).  The 
story  of  his  labours  falls  outside  the  limits  that  we 
have  assigned  to  our  survey,  but  their  results  were 
lasting  for  centuries  after  his  death.  Through  his 
devoted  toils,  above  all  by  his  translation  of  the 
Bible  into  their  native  language,  Ulfilas  won  over 
the  Goths  and  Visigoths  beyond  the  Danube  to  al- 
legiance to  Christ.  When  therefore  there  took  place 
the  great  migration  of  the  Goths,  which  led  ulti- 
mately to  the  overrunning  of  Italy,  Spain,  and 
Northern  Africa,  the  conquerors,  though  still  bar- 
barians, were  yet  Christians.  Though  they  were 
Arians,  through  the  political  accidents  of  the  time 
rather  than  by  any  lapse  on  the  part  of  Ulfilas,  when 
they  overturned  the  Empire  they  had  no  intention  of 
overturning  Christianity.  Thus  the  invasions  which 
produced  the  fall  of  the  Empire  to  some  extent 
strengthened  the  Church.  But  for  the  labours  of 
Ulfilas  the  result  would  have  been  far  otherwise. 
The  Church,  surviving  its  first  struggle  against  ex- 
termination, would  have  been  so  weakened  that  she 
would  not  have  had  the  strength — we  speak  after  the 
manner  of  men — to  overcome  the  great  heathen  in- 
vasions of  the  eighth  and  ninth  centuries. 

Ill 

Before  we  close  this  introductory  lecture  there  is  a 
question  to  which  we  should  do  well  to  attempt  an 
answer.  The  more  the  student  ponders  the  fall  of 
the  Eoman  civilization,  the  more  perplexed  he  is  to 


ITS   TASK   IN   THE  MIDDLE  AGES  3 1 

account  for  it.  By  this  we  do  not  refer  merely  to  its 
external  causes  for  those,  whether  internal  or  external, 
are  plain.  We  allude  to  something  more  fundamen- 
tal ;  what  part  did  the  Fall  of  the  Empire  play  in  the 
moral  evolution  of  the  world  ?  Was  the  Fall  a  mere 
catastrophe  of  evil,  a  throw-back  of  civilization  to 
primitive  barbarism  ;  or  was  the  Fall  after  all  an 
event  in  which  we  may  see  traces  of  the  moral  gov- 
ernment of  the  Universe  ?  Such  a  question  is  of  the 
highest  importance.  Upon  the  answer  we  give  to  it 
depends  the  whole  view  we  take  of  history.  For  the 
Fall  of  the  Empire  is,  undoubtedly,  the  greatest 
event  in  human  annals,  the  most  tragic  in  its  cir- 
cumstances, the  most  momentous  in  its  results. 
Either  the  Fall  must  have  some  moral  justification, 
or  else  we  must  hold  with  Gibbon  that  history  is  but 
the  record  of  the  crimes  and  follies  of  humanity.  In 
other  words  the  Fall  of  the  Empire  brings  us  sharply 
face  to  face  with  the  problem  of  Divine  Government. 
That  the  greatest  catastrophe  of  history  should  be 
wholly  unrelated  to  moral  causes  would  be  a  prac- 
tical dethronement  of  God  from  a  sovereign  place  in 
human  affairs. 

Now  not  many  years  ago,  under  the  influence  of 
German  scholars,  it  was  customary  to  give  a  some- 
what glib  answer  to  the  difficulty  thus  raised.  The 
Fall  of  the  Empire  was  necessary,  it  was  said,  for 
only  by  the  infusion  of  the  new  Teutonic  blood  could 
Europe  find  her  higher  self  and  the  Church  develop 
her  true  power.  This  crude  Germanic  optimism,  or 
self-esteem,  scarcely  appeals  to  modern  scholars ;  it 
savours  too  much  of  the  doctrines  of  Treitschke,  the 
superman  of  Nietsche,  and  the   attempts  made  to 


32  THE  CHURCH 

prove  that  all  greatness  comes  from  over  the  Ehlne. 
We  do  not  recognize  in  the  hordes  of  Germans  and 
other  barbarians  the  saviours  of  the  world.  We  are 
too  deeply  conscious  to-day  of  all  that  they  destroyed. 
No  doubt  new  blood  was  necessary,  and  the  bar- 
barian invasions  were  not  wholly  evil.  But  consid- 
ered as  a  surgical  operation  the  price  paid  through 
long  centuries  for  their  rude  cautery  was  altogether 
excessive. 

The  answer  to  the  question  is  exceedingly  difficult ; 
the  more  so  as  the  causes  of  the  Fall  itself  are  so  ob- 
scure that  there  is  still,  in  spite  of  the  researches  of 
recent  years,  no  agreement  among  scholars.  At 
present,  under  the  influence  of  Schiller,  the  tendency 
is  to  dwell  upon  the  financial  causes,  the  accumula- 
tion of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  a  few,  the  disappear- 
ance of  a  middle  class,  the  vast  masses  of  slaves,  the 
depopulation  of  the  country  by  slave  labour  driving 
out  the  free  farmer  and  the  yeoman,  the  sapping  of 
the  vitality  of  the  lower  free  classes  by  a  system  of 
doles  and  largesse  and  the  like.  All  these  were  prob- 
ably correct,  and  as  contributory  causes  their  im- 
portance cannot  be  exaggerated,  especially  the  prac- 
tical disappearance  of  the  middle  classes,  and  all  the 
weakness  thereby  involved. 

Further  investigation  is  certainly  needed  of  the 
economic  issues  of  the  age.  Was  the  Fall  of  the  Em- 
pire one  of  the  results  of  that  massing  of  men  in 
towns  which  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  results 
of  the  centuries  of  the  Roman  Peace?  When  a  na- 
tion is  cut  off  from  the  soil  that  nation  is  in  peril  of 
its  existence.  That  such  massing  in  the  towns  of  free 
population  was  one  issue  of  the  slavery  which  con- 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  33 

centrated  estates  in  few  hands,  working  the  farms 
from  gigantic  ergasfula,  would  explain  at  least  one 
moral  cause  of  the  Fall.  In  the  towns  also  what  was 
the  place  of  what  the  Americans  call,  as  the  result  of 
a  similar  problem,  ' '  the  poor  white  "  ?  It  is  difficult 
to  see  how  such  vast  cities  as  Carthage  and  Milan, — 
to  say  nothing  of  Eome — could  have  had  an  adequate 
economic  basis.  The  industrial  development  which 
would  have  relieved  the  strain  had  been  thwarted  by 
the  paramount  fact  of  slavery.  The  problem  of  the 
idle  rich  is  bad  enough  ;  the  problem  of  the  idle  poor 
which  slavery  brings  with  it,  especially  when  the 
slaves  are  freed,  is  worse. 

Among  the  financial  causes  of  weakness  must  also 
be  noted  the  vast  expenses  of  civic  ofi&ce  in  the 
second,  much  more  in  the  third  century  of  the  Em- 
pire. To  hold  of&ce  with  the  cost  it  involved  in  pro- 
viding games,  gladiators,  or  other  spectacles,  was  to 
involve  oneself  in  financial  ruin  for  all  except  the 
wealthiest.  Others  besides  Christians  caught  at  any 
means  of  escape  from  the  intolerable  burden.  Some 
went  so  far  as  to  unfit  themselves  for  office  by  con- 
tracting marriage  with  a  freed  woman  ;  others  bought 
themselves  out  at  a  price.  But  the  general  result 
was  the  dropping  out  of  the  middle  classes,  and  all 
the  financial  instability  thereby  involved.  Granting 
however  to  the  financial  causes  the  fullest  weight, 
nevertheless  they  seem  utterly  inadequate  as  a  suffi- 
cient explanation  of  the  greatest  catastrophe  in  his- 
tory. We  must  refuse  to  own  that  the  dollar  is  the 
decisive  factor  in  human  affairs. 

Neither  do  we  find  a  solution  if  we  turn  to  moral 
causes.     At  one  time  it  was  the  custom,  especially  of 


34  THE  CHURCH 

preachers,  to  paiDt  in  blackest  colours  the  moral 
degeneracy  and  unbridled  luxury  of  both  the  early 
and  later  Empire.  The  common  mistake  was  made 
of  taking  the  outpourings  of  satirists  and  moralists 
at  their  face  value.  For  we  must  always  remember 
that  it  is  inevitable  in  the  chronicles  of  an  age  that 
vice  should  be  singled  out,  especially  rare  vice,  and 
that  virtue,  especially  commonplace  virtue,  should 
be  neglected.  The  many  glorious  nights  of  summer 
have  slight  place  in  our  memories  or  gratitude  ;  one 
devastating  storm  stamps  itself  indelibly.  So  in 
history.  There  is  not  a  century  or  epoch  in  which  it 
is  not  possible  to  draw  the  blackest  picture  of  moral 
decay  and  ruin,  by  concentrating  attention  upon  the 
vice  that  obtrudes  itself,  and  neglecting  to  discover 
the  virtues  which  have  neither  annalist  nor  herald, 
but  which  were  not  the  less  real  because  silent. 

This  is  especially  true  in  the  case  of  the  Empire. 
Those  who  were  discontented  with  the  present  were 
driven  into  satire,  and,  inasmuch  as  through  political 
reasons  they  could  not  sketch  a  happier  future  with- 
out running  the  risk  of  treason,  they  were  forced  to 
contrast  the  sordid  features  of  their  generation  with 
the  fabled  happiness  of  an  age  in  the  past  that  never 
existed.  Even  Nero  himself,  to  say  nothing  of  Ti- 
berius, could  scarcely  have  been  quite  so  low  and 
wicked  as  he  is  usually  painted  ;  if  so  it  is  difficult 
to  account  for  the  popularity  he  enjoyed,  and  the  per- 
sistent belief  among  the  people,  alluded  to  by  the  au- 
thor of  the  Apocalypse,  that  he  would  some  day  return 
to  reign.  We  must  discount  therefore  much  of  the 
positive  evidence  of  moral  disorder,  especially  in  the 
cases  where  we  are  solely  dependent  on  persecuted, 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  35 

and  consequently  embittered,  Christian  writers,  or 
upon  political  satirists;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  are  many  indications  of  the  existence  of  a 
normal  moral  life  among  the  people  at  large.  The 
recent  discoveries  in  Egypt  and  elsewhere  give  no 
support  to  the  idea  of  a  vast  moral  degeneration 
among  the  people  at  large. 

The  difficulty  of  accounting  for  the  Fall  of  the 
Empire  is  further  increased  when  we  remember  that 
the  Fall  followed  hard  upon  a  distinct  spiritual 
revival  in  the  old  Roman  world.  By  this  we  do  not 
refer  to  the  growth  of  Christianity,  but  to  the  fact 
that  the  attempt  of  Christianity  to  obtain  the  mas- 
tery of  the  Empire  coincided,  it  would  appear,  with 
an  upward  spiritual  movement  among  mankind  at 
large.  The  old  heathen  conceptions  strove  in  many 
ways  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  enlarged  spiritual 
and  human  outlook  of  a  world  which  was  no  longer 
local  in  its  instincts  but  imperial.  The  search  of  the 
philosophers  for  the  universal  principle  in  knowledge 
and  thought  had  resolved  itself,  among  the  more 
thoughtful  laity,  into  the  desire  to  find  some  uni- 
versal object  of  faith.  The  spirituality  and  high 
calling  of  Stoicism,  as  exemplified  in  Marcus  Aurelius, 
or  the  slave  Epictetus,  is  a  commonplace  of  history. 
Less  familiar  is  the  growing  spirituality  which 
students  have  discovered,  especially  in  the  second 
century,  in  the  three  great  rivals  of  the  Christian 
faith  :  the  worship  of  the  Great  Mother,  the  worship 
of  Isis,  and,  above  all,  the  worship  of  Mithra.  These 
three  religious,  with  the  stress  they  laid  on  atone- 
ment, vicarious  sacrifice,  immortality,  and  mystic 
rapture,  prepared  the  old  world  in  more  ways  than 


36  THE  CHURCH 

one  for  the  religion  which  was  to  satisfy,  at  last,  the 
hunger  and  thirst  of  humanity.  At  the  same  time 
they  make  it  more  difficult  to  account  for  the  fall  of 
the  Empire.  The  influence  of  Stoicism  upon  the 
people  may  have  been  but  slight,  but  Mithraism 
numbered  its  devotees  by  the  thousands,  even  as  far 
north  as  the  Eoman  Wall  in  Northumberland,  and 
was  the  special  cult  of  Eoman  soldiers. 

The  Fall  of  the  Empire  remains  the  great  mystery 
of  history.  But  to  acknowledge  this  is  not  to  allow 
that  history  reveals  that  there  may  be  cataclysms  and 
catastrophes,  unrelated  to  moral  causes,  whose  up- 
shot was  the  destruction  of  thriving  civilizations. 
The  Christian  is  necessarily  an  optimist ;  for  him 
the  watchword  of  humanity  is  progress ;  "it  doth 
not  yet  appear  what  we  shall  be  '^  is  the  inspired 
declaration  of  his  hope.  Progress,  probably,  is  al- 
ways in  cycles,  attended  by  times  of  reaction,  but  to 
believe  that  these  cycles  are  without  goal  or  moral 
direction  is  the  negation  of  the  Cross  and  the  proc- 
lamation of  chaos.  The  Fall  of  the  Empire,  there- 
fore, just  because  it  is  the  greatest  catastrophe  in 
history,  cannot  be  unrelated  to  moral  causes  or 
government.  We  are  bound  by  the  convictions  of 
our  faith  to  assert  that  it  was  neither  accidental  nor 
without  sequence  of  good,  though  we  must  at  the 
same  time  confess  that  for  our  belief  there  is  no 
sufficient  demonstration. 

Possibly  the  causes  of  the  Fall  may  never  be 
satisfactorily  known.  Doubtless  there  were  factors 
in  that  fall  the  existence  of  which  in  that  unscientific 
age  were  unnoticed  or  unrecorded,  but  which  were 
absolutely  vital  in  their  consequences.     One  or  two 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  37 

of  these  may  be  indicated.  What  position  for  in- 
stance did  the  women  of  the  age  take  up  towards  the 
burden  of  motherhood?  That  the  nation  which, 
under  dreams  of  woman's  emancipation  or  equality, 
or  through  love  of  ease,  refuses  that  burden,  is  a 
doomed  nation,  is  the  accepted  verdict  of  history ; 
but  we  have  no  evidence  suffi.cieut  for  us  to  decide 
whether  Rome  fell  because  its  women,  especially  in 
the  governing  classes,  refused  the  burden  of  their 
sex. 

Then  again  we  have  no  records  which  would  enable 
us  to  estimate  the  part  played  in  the  Fall  by  epi- 
demics and  other  physical  causes.  The  possible  im- 
portance of  this  cause  cannot  be  exaggerated.  Only 
in  the  last  thirty  years  have  historians  discovered  the 
tremendous  consequences,  social,  economic,  political, 
and  religious,  of  the  Black  Death  of  1349.  This  ap- 
palling catastrophe  not  only  swept  away  half  the 
population  of  Europe,  but  left  its  mark  on  every 
aspect  of  the  national  life.  In  England,  for  in- 
stance, it  contributed  more  than  any  other  cause  to 
the  destruction  of  the  old  mediaeval  system  of  land 
tenure,  while  the  monasteries  never  recovered  from 
the  burden  of  debt  and  depleted  numbers  which  it 
inflicted  upon  them.  We  may  safely  say  that  but  for 
the  Black  Death  Henry  YIII  could  not  have  carried 
out  his  policy  of  monastic  destruction.  Bearing  in 
mind  therefore  the  consequences  which  without  ex- 
aggeration may  safely  be  traced  to  the  Black  Death, 
we  may  ask  whether  or  not  there  were  similar  events 
in  the  Eoman  world  which  have  not  perhaps  received 
from  historians  their  due  attention.  Take  for  in- 
stance malaria.     The  Campagna  of  Italy  bears  wit- 


38  THE  CHURCH 

ness  to  this  day  of  awful  devastation  caused  by  this 
plague,  but  in  the  days  of  Eome's  greatness  the 
Campagna  was  a  smiling  garden.  Whence  came  the 
malaria?  Was  it  due  to  preventable  causes  of  a 
moral  nature,  as  for  instance  the  substitution  of 
sheep  farming  and  slave  labour  for  the  petty  tillage 
of  the  old  free  yeomen,  or  did  the  malaria  arise  from 
general  ignorance  ?  Whether  from  one  or  the  other, 
it  is  at  least  a  tenable  surmise,  that  has  recently  found 
strenuous  advocates,  that  malaria  may  have  played 
no  small  part  in  the  destruction  of  both  the  GreeJ: 
and  the  Eoman  cultures.  What  part  also  should  be 
assigned  to  the  plague  which  in  the  middle  of  the 
third  century  ravaged  the  provinces  of  the  Empire 
for  fifteen  years  in  succession,  carrying  off  in  Alex- 
andria and  other  cities  more  than  half  the  population. 
Seasons  of  scorching  drought  followed  by  terrific  tor- 
nadoes, famine,  earthquakes  and  huge  tidal  waves 
completed  the  ruin.  The  struggle  with  nature  is  not 
new.  Nor  is  it  fatal  unless  the  national  will  has 
been  weakened  by  luxury  or  bad  government,  or, 
as  is  the  case  in  Mesopotamia,  the  fatalism  of  Islam 
has  extinguished  effort. 

We  may  frankly  own  that  the  problem  of  the  Fall 
of  the  Western  Empire  is  incapable  of  solution  with 
the  existing  materials.  It  may  perhaps  lessen  the 
problem,  at  any  rate  for  the  Christian,  if  we  enquire 
what  would  have  been  the  fate  of  the  Church  had  the 
Empire  survived,  not  as  a  mere  ghost  of  its  former 
self,  but  in  its  old  majesty  and  power.  The  Papacy, 
of  course,  would  have  been  condemned  to  play  a  part 
in  the  world  of  much  the  same  importance  as  the 
bishops  of  Antioch  or  Alexandria-     But  with  all  its 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  39 

defects  the  liistorian  must  own  that  for  loDg  centuries 
the  Papacy  was  the  greatest  force  that  made  for 
righteousness  that  the  world  knew.  More  pertinent 
is  it  to  ask  whether  Christianity  itself  could  have  ac- 
quired any  real  hold  in  the  Eoman  Empire,  whether 
for  instance  there  was  not  an  essential  antagonism 
between  Csesar  and  Christ,  between  the  fundamental 
concepts  of  the  Empire  and  the  Church.  We  believe 
it  may  be  legitimately  argued  that  in  a  strong  Em- 
pire true  to  itself  and  its  leading  principles,  Chris- 
tianity was  impossible,  unless  indeed  it  were  willing 
to  reduce  itself  to  the  level  of  a  mere  philosophical 
opinion  which,  like  Stoicism  or  Neoplatonism,  might 
be  held  by  the  cultured  few,  but  which  made  few  at- 
tempts to  proselytize  the  masses,  or  to  alter  radically 
the  structure  of  society.  For  Christianity,  at  any 
rate  in  its  earlier  and  purer  days,  the  fashionable 
syncretism  of  philosophy,  in  which  Plutarch  and 
other  thinkers  found  solace,  was  a  sheer  impossi- 
bility. With  sublime  audacity  the  followers  of 
Jesus  proclaimed  that  Christ  must  be  all  in  all. 
Christianity  emblazoned  on  its  banners  its  loathing 
and  disdain  for  the  cults  around.  But  toleration  for 
local  cults  of  every  sort,  provided  they  were  not 
harmful  to  the  State  or  detrimental  to  morals,  was 
an  essential  principle  of  Eoman  policy.  Eoman 
toleration  in  fact  was  merely  a  matter  of  political 
expediency.  For  the  Church  in  the  Empire  tolera- 
tion was  an  impossibility.  A  Christianity  that  was 
willing  to  accommodate  itself  to  the  heathenism 
around  would  never  have  conquered  the  world. 

The  reader  will  not  fail  to  notice  one  result.     The 
imperial  toleration  was  a  local  matter,  if  only  for  the 


40  THE  CHURCH 

simple  reason  that  polytheism  was  esseotially  a  local 
matter.  Each  god  had  his  rights,  within  certain 
areas ;  but  each  god  must  be  careful  to  respect  the 
rights  of  his  neighbour.  To  ignore  this  rule  would 
lead  to  chaos,  or  rather  to  the  end  of  the  whole 
system.  Now  a  universal  faith,  provided  it  makes 
any  real  demands  on  its  devotees,  must  come  into 
conflict  with  ijolytheism.  The  claims  of  the  local 
and  of  the  universal  cannot  be  conciliated.  We  see 
this  in  later  days  in  the  case  of  Muhammad.  The 
same  thing  was  illustrated  even  more  abundantly  in 
the  rise  of  the  Church.  The  Christians  were  not 
persecuted  because  of  their  creed,  but  because  of 
their  universal  claims.  For  monotheism,  viewed 
merely  as  a  philosophy,  the  Eomans  had  some  sym- 
pathy. But  a  monotheism  which  refused  to  allow 
place  for  others  must  be  brushed  aside  as  a  political 
nuisance  or  an  *' atheistic"  monster.  This  univer- 
sality of  claim,  this  aggressiveness  of  temper,  this  con- 
sciousness from  the  first  of  world-wide  dominion — in 
a  word,  all  that  in  later  days  was  summed  up  in  the 
title  of  Catholic — was  the  inevitable  cause  of  the  im- 
perial persecution  of  the  Christians.  Neither  the 
Church  nor  the  Empire  could  act  otherwise  save  by 
running  contrary  to  their  true  genius.  The  failure 
to  understand  this  essential  opposition  lies  at  the 
root  of  the  constant  complaints  of  Christian  apolo- 
gists as  to  the  different  treatment  measured  out  to 
them  and  "  to  the  men  who  worship  trees  and  rivers 
and  mice  and  cats  and  crocodiles.*^  It  has  also 
obscured  for  many  church  historians  the  real  meaning 
of  persecution  itself,  as  a  matter  rather  of  political 
necessity  than  of  mere  love  of  cruelty. 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  41 

We  should  thus  err  greatly  if  we  looked  upon  the 
dissolution  of  the  old  Eoman  world  as  altogether  loss. 
With  the  Fall  of  the  Empire  there  had  passed  away 
much  that  was  harmful,  as  well  as  more  that  was  valu- 
able. Gone  for  instance  was  the  apotheosis  of  Ctesar, 
and  in  the  worship  of  Caesar  the  Church  ever  recog. 
nized  its  most  potent  foe.  I  need  scarcely  remind 
you  of  what  was  meant  by  this,  and  of  its  results. 
Augustus,  the  better  to  work  out  those  ideas  of  uni- 
versal citizenship,  equality,  and  government  for  which 
the  Empire  stood,  had  found  it  necessary  to  institute 
or  rather  develop  a  common  religion  to  give  a  unity 
to  provinces  otherwise  diverse  in  creed,  language  and 
custom.  This  common  worship  of  Eome  and  Augus- 
tus was  the  beginning  of  a  universal  Church  with  a 
priesthood,  sacrifices,  and  temples  of  its  own,  very 
similar  and  yet  very  different  in  conception  and  aim 
from  the  Catholic  Church  with  which  it  was  destined 
to  come  into  conflict.  The  development  of  this  wor- 
ship had  speedily  become  a  fixed  part  of  the  imperial 
economy.  Against  this  worship  the  Christians  alone 
had  stood  out  with  unvarying  hostility.  No  patriotic 
words  as  to  the  Genius  of  the  Empire,  no  sophisms  of 
the  elder  Pliny  that  "  for  a  mortal  to  help  mortals  is 
the  essence  of  deity,"  no  philosophic  subtleties  about 
the  divine  life  of  the  State  and  its  connection  with  an 
unseen  order,  could  deceive  the  Christian  into  for- 
getting the  degradation  for  God  and  man  alike  of  this 
system  of  apotheosis.  He  saw  clearly  the  insult  to 
God ;  the  putting  the  Genius  of  the  Empire  in  the 
place  of  Divine  Providence,  the  attributing  to  man 
prerogatives  which  belong  solely  to  the  Almighty. 
He  realized  the  degradation  of  man  resulting  from 


42  THE  CHURCH 

thus  fixing  the  worship  of  men  upon  one  of  them- 
selves, however  exalted.  He  knew  that  in  all  ages  a 
man's  views  of  his  god  are  the  measures  of  his  ideals 
for  himself  and  his  neighbour.  He  was  aware  of  all 
that  could  be  said  in  its  favour  by  Plutarch  and  other 
philosophic  writers ;  that  it  was  a  symbol  of  unity, 
the  "keystone  of  the  imperial  policy,"  an  incarna- 
tion of  the  race's  solidarity,  the  recognition  of  a 
divine  foundation  for  order  and  empire,  and  the  like. 

Such  specious  arguments  did  not  move  him.  For 
the  Christian  there  was  but  one  Lord  and  Master  to 
whom  he  owned  supreme  allegiance  ;  this  he  was 
prepared  to  prove  by  the  renunciation  of  all  things, 
even  life  itself.  For  the  Christian  the  unity  of 
the  race  was  symbolized,  not  by  a  Tiberius  or  a 
Marcus  Aurelius,  but  by  the  incarnation  of  Jesus 
Christ ;  in  the  Man  Christ  Jesus  alone  was  the  hope 
of  humanity.  This  apotheosis  of  Jesus,  to  look  at 
the  matter  for  the  moment  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
heathen  philosopher,  he  claimed  to  be  on  a  different 
footing  from  the  apotheosis  of  Claudius  or  Vespasian. 
Leaving  on  one  side  all  question  of  character,  the  one 
was  the  apotheosis  of  a  supreme  renunciation,  the 
other  the  idolatry  of  success.  And  there  is  nothing 
so  fatal  in  the  long  run  to  all  higher  instincts  and 
aspirations  as  the  idolatry  of  success,  whether  in  the 
form  of  a  second-century  emperor  or  a  twentieth- 
century  millionaire. 

But  with  the  Fall  of  the  Empire  all  this,  in  the 
West  at  least,  passed  away,  though  it  still  lingered 
on  in  spirit  in  the  Eastern  Empire.  The  ^ain  to  hu- 
manity was  immense.  Mere  local  heathenism  could 
be  destroyed  or  overcome  j  the  worship  of  Eome  and 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  43 

Augustus  was  a  policy  based  upon  political  necessi- 
ties; its  overthrow  could  only  be  accomplished  by 
the  destruction  of  the  Empire  itself.  The  results 
of  the  overthrow  may  be  deplored,  until  we  remem- 
ber that  no  future  of  progress  and  hope  could  lie 
before  a  world  whose  unity  was  still  based  on  the 
worship  of  Csesar,  or  any  other  mortal  all-higlles^. 

Another  gain  for  the  world  from  the  Fall  of  the 
Empire  lay  in  the  dethronement  of  the  Eoman  idea 
that  the  State  as  such  was  absolute  and  supreme, 
above  all  law,  and  with  a  complete  claim  upon  the 
souls  as  well  as  the  bodies  of  each  of  its  citizens.  By 
Eoman  theory  the  State  was  the  one  society  which 
must  engross  every  interest  of  its  subjects,  religious, 
social,  political,  humanitarian,  with  the  one  possible 
exception  of  the  family.  There  was  no  room  in  Eo- 
man law  for  the  existence,  much  less  the  development 
on  its  own  lines  of  organic  growth,  of  any  corpora- 
tion or  society  which  did  not  recognize  itself  from  the 
first  as  a  mere  department  or  auxiliary  of  the  State. 
The  Stat«  was  all  and  in  all,  the  one  organism  with  a 
life  of  its  own. 

This  Eoman  concept — almost  identical  in  expres- 
sion and  aim  to  its  modern  imitation,  the  German 
Jcultur — had  worked  marvels  in  the  reducing  chaos  to 
order,  and  bringing  in  efficiency,  but  in  the  process 
it  had  reduced  the  individual  to  a  valueless  unit, 
just  as  does  its  modern  representative,  however  effi- 
cient and  orderly  may  be  the  other  results  of  the 
system.  The  elimination  from  the  ideas  of  Europe 
of  this  conception  of  a  state  above  law  was  a  priceless 
gain.  In  its  place  there  arose,  it  is  true,  the  struggle 
of  individual  nations  striving  to  express  themselves 


44  THE  CHURCH 

in  their  own  way,  but  it  was  through  this  very  strug- 
gle that  we  can  trace  the  rise  of  individual  liberty. 
So  little  was  the  State  as  such  above  law,  irresponsi- 
ble, that  the  fundamental  conception  of  the  dominant 
State,  the  Holy  Eoman  Empire,  was  a  responsibility, 
not  the  less  real  because  ill-defined,  of  its  secular  head 
or  emperor  to  its  spiritual  head,  the  pope.  How 
deadly  was  the  Eoman  idea  of  an  irresponsible  State, 
an  end  of  worship  in  itself  and  as  such  to  be  treated 
as  divine,  how  great  the  deliverance  of  Europe  by  its 
overthrow  we  may  see  in  the  woes  that  have  resulted 
from  the  revival  in  a  new  form  of  the  old  Eoman  idea 
by  Machiavelli  at  the  Eenaissance,  its  enthusiastic 
adoption  in  modern  Germany  by  Treitschke  and 
other  professors.  All  the  evils  which  have  come  to 
Europe  from  the  logical  carrying  out  of  a  theory 
which  puts  the  State  ilber  alles,  even  above  law  and 
God,  only  demonstrate  how  right  were  the  early 
Christians  when  they  chose  death  itself  rather  than 
acknowledge  for  one  moment  the  divinity  of  Eome 
and  Augustus.  The  cycle  of  time  has  brought  back 
once  more  with  added  horrors  the  Eoman  state- 
kultur;  once  more,  through  the  martyrdom  of  na- 
tions and  not  as  of  old  of  individuals  only,  must  the 
world  be  delivered  from  this  fatal  barrier  to  individ- 
ual liberty. 

IV 

If  the  problem  of  the  fall  of  the  Western  Empire  is 
insoluble  for  those  who  would  demonstrate  adequate 
moral  causes,  still  more  difficult  is  the  problem  of 
the  fall  of  the  Eastern  Empire  and  the  triumph  of 
Islam.     How  was  it,  the  reader  may  ask,  that  the 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  45 

original  centres  of  Christianity  so  speedily  succumbed 
to  the  unitarian,  that  Alexandria,  Carthage,  Antioch, 
Ephesus,  Constantinople, — names  forever  illustrious 
for  the  one-time  virility  of  their  Christian  thought, 
and  their  lasting  contributions  to  the  Christian  faith 
— became  both  lost  to  the  Cross  and  in  some  cases 
lost  to  civilization  as  well.  No  satisfactory  answer 
is  possible  :  Even  more  than  the  Fall  of  the  Western 
Empire  the  devastation  of  the  Eastern  and  African 
churches  is  a  mystery  that  taxes  faith.  Nevertheless 
historical  enquiry  will  reveal  certain  causes  for  the 
conquest  of  Islam. 

Islam  conquered  because  the  caliphs  who  succeeded 
Muhammad  in  spite  of  their  burning  zeal  exercised 
a  shrewd  "toleration,"  taking  care,  of  course,  not  to 
read  into  this  word  modern  English  or  American 
ideas,  but  to  understand  it  relatively  to  the  age.  By 
the  laws  of  the  faith  polytheists  and  idolaters  might 
be  exterminated,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  Muham- 
madan  conquerors  of  India  have  always  spared  its 
temples.  In  all  countries  also,  except  in  Arabia 
itself  where  no  faith  was  permitted  but  Islam,  the 
Muslims,  however  much  they  might  despise,  always 
tolerated  the  Jew  or  the  Christian.  On  the  payment 
of  a  moderate  tribute  the  conquered  who  refused  to 
conform  were  entitled  to  the  freedom  of  conscience 
and  religious  worship.  In  Syria  their  churches  were 
not  taken  from  them.  After  the  conquest  of  Damas- 
cus in  635  half  of  the  churches  were  allotted  to  the 
Christians  ;  it  was  not  until  eighty  years  later  that 
the  great  cathedral  was  made  a  mosque  through  the 
gradual  decline  of  the  Christian  population.  There 
were  other  causes  of  the  extension  of  Islam.    As 


46  THE  CHURCH 

Gibbon  has  pointed  out  ^'in  a  field  of  battle  the 
forfeit  lives  of  the  prisoners  were  redeemed  by  the 
profession  of  Islam  ;  the  females  were  bound  to  con- 
fess the  religion  of  their  masters,  and  a  race  of  sincere 
proselytes  was  gradually  multiplied  by  the  education 
of  the  infant  captives.  But  the  millions  of  African 
and  Asiatic  converts  who  swelled  the  native  bands 
of  the  faithful  Arabs  must  have  been  allured  rather 
than  constrained  to  declare  their  belief  in  one  God 
and  the  apostle  of  God.  By  the  repetition  of  a 
sentence  and  the  loss  of  a  foreskin,  the  subject  or  the 
slave,  the  captive  or  the  criminal,  arose  in  a  moment 
the  free  and  equal  companion  of  the  victorious  Mos- 
lems. Every  sin  was  expiated,  every  engagement 
was  dissolved  ;  the  vow  of  celibacy  was  superseded 
by  the  indulgence  of  nature  ;  the  active  spirits  who 
slept  in  the  cloister  were  awakened  by  the  trumpet 
of  the  Saracen  ;  and,  in  the  convulsion  of  the  world, 
every  member  of  a  new  society  ascended  to  the  natural 
level  of  his  capacity  and  courage.''  * 

Now  these  causes  cannot  be  regarded  as  moral ; 
they  made  their  appeal  to  the  unregenerate  man.  It 
is  only  when  we  come  to  contrast  this  easy-going 
proselytism  with  the  deadly  intolerance  of  the  Church 
in  the  East,  that  we  see  wherein  lay  a  great  weak- 
ness. In  the  East  the  controversies  that  raged  round 
the  various  symbols  of  the  faith  had  degenerated  into 
obstinate  and  sanguinary  struggles,  in  which  one 
party  pillaged  and  murdered  another  in  the  name  of 
the  profound  mysteries  of  the  Incarnation  and  of  the 
Trinity.  From  the  secular  point  of  view  the  Council 
of  Chalcedon  (451),  with  its  seeming  settlement  of  a 
1  Gibbon,  Vol.  V,  p.  487. 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  47 

long  theological  controversy,  was  a  great  misfortune 
for  the  Empire.  The  disunion  of  the  East  to  which 
it  led  was  one  of  the  immediate  causes  of  the  tri- 
umph of  Islam.  Whole  provinces  of  the  Empire 
were  driven  by  persecution  into  disaffection.  Men, 
wearied  by  the  endless  struggles  concerning  meta- 
physical niceties,  with  the  ready  fatalism  of  the  East, 
accepted,  if  they  did  not  welcome,  a  creed  forced 
upon  them  from  without,  which  ended  the  conflict  by 
remorselessly  reducing  all  to  acquiescence  in  a  new 
doctrine  whose  rigid  monotheism  admitted  of  no 
debate.  Islam  conquered  because  of  the  weariness 
of  a  world  which  had  lost  the  living  Christ  in  end- 
less controversies  as  to  His  Person.  When  the  great 
Justinian,  whose  whole  ecclesiastical  policy  was  as 
great  a  series  of  mistakes  as  his  Church  of  Santa 
Sophia  at  Constantinople  was  a  masterpiece  of 
architecture,  undertook  to  establish  the  unity  of  the 
Christian  faith  with  fire  and  sword,  he  really  pre- 
pared the  way  for  the  destruction  of  the  faith  itself. 
The  same  mistake  was  made  at  a  later  date  by  the 
emperor  Heraclius.  Heraclius,  one  of  the  greatest 
generals  the  world  has  ever  seen,  saved  the  East  from 
the  Persian  invasion.  In  victory  after  victory  he 
wrested  Egypt  and  Palestine  from  Chosroes  (620), 
but  when  the  greater  peril  of  Islam  arose,  Heraclius 
had  estranged  Egypt  by  becoming  the  persecuting 
tool  of  Sergius  the  patriarch  of  Constantinople. 

In  a  word  the  grave  of  the  Empire  was  dug  by 
a  fanatical,  persecuting  Orthodoxy.  The  powerful 
Monophysites  and  Monothelites  of  the  East  might  be 
compelled  by  the  forces  of  the  Empire  nominally  to 
renounce  their  heresies  j  in  reality  they  clung  to  them 


48  THE  CHURCH 

still,  aud  only  awaited  their  opportunity.  The  Fall 
of  the  Eastern  Empire,  the  direct  result  of  eccle- 
siastical disunion,  gave  to  these  sects  a  continued  if 
struggling  existence.  They  found  under  the  aegis  of 
Islam  a  rest  and  protection  that  had  been  denied 
them  by  the  dominant  Greek  Church.  The  Mar- 
onites,  Jacobites,  Nestorians,  Armenians  and  Copts 
of  Asia  Minor,  Mesopotamia  and  Egypt  are  not  only 
the  feeble  survivals  of  once  powerful  theological 
schools  ;  they  are  the  constant  reminder  by  their  ex- 
istence in  the  midst  of  Muhammadan  peoples  of  the 
disintegrating  forces  of  religious  intolerance.  In 
Egypt,  for  instance,  where  theological  feuds  raged 
fiercest,  thousands  of  turbulent  Coptic  monks  were 
prepared  to  lay  down  their  lives  for  a  clause  or  a 
word  in  the  definition  of  a  dogma,  yet  accepted, 
almost  without  a  struggle,  the  Muslim  conquerors — 
even  if  we  reject  the  story  of  the  treachery  of  a  mys- 
terious Christian  ruler  called  the  '^Mukaukas,'' 
whom  some  writers  have  identified  with  the  Melchite 
patriarch  of  Alexandria.  Whatever  the  truth  of  this 
tale,  for  the  Coptic  or  native  Egyptian  Church  the 
Arab  invasion  was  almost  a  relief  from  the  intolerant 
tyranny  of  Constantinople,  abetted  by  the  dominant 
Greeks  of  Alexandria. 

Nor  must  we  overlook  in  this  connection  the  fatal 
effects,  especially  in  Egypt,  of  Monasticism.  With 
the  undoubted  services  of  Monasticism  to  civilization 
in  the  Western  world  we  shall  deal  in  a  later  lecture, 
but  in  the  East  the  services  were  few,  the  mischievous 
effect  without  question.  In  Egypt,  especially,  the 
strougly-marked  individualism  of  Monachism  not 
only  led  it  into  excesses  and  extravagances  of  as- 


ITS  TASK  IN   THE  MIDDLE  AGES  49 

ceticism  that  disgraced  human  nature  itself,  but  also 
into  a  fatal  indifference  if  not  antagonism  to  the  in- 
terests of  the  State.  To  account  for  this  is  not  dififi- 
cult.  In  its  first  origins  Christiaility  had  lain  over 
against  the  State  because  of  its  parousiau  conceptions. 
In  the  first  enthusiasm  of  their  chiliastic  hopes  the 
Christians  had  a  tendency  to  forget  the  duties  they 
owed  to  the  State.  The  claims  of  the  old  ''world" 
that  was  "passing  away,  with  the  fashion  thereof," 
and  of  the  new  world  that  men  "  greeted  from  afar  " 
were  not  easy  to  adjust.  Synchronizing  with  the 
decay  of  parousiau  belief  we  have  the  rise  of  Mon- 
asticism,  in  which  the  adjustment  was  even  less  suc- 
cessful. In  Monasticism,  in  fact,  we  find  antagonism 
to  the  State  one  of  the  primal  elements,  an  indiffer- 
ence or  hostility  at  which  we  need  not  wonder,  if  we 
remember  the  then  circumstances  of  the  State  against 
which  it  revolted.  For  the  Empire,  whatever  may 
be  said  as  to  the  causes,  was  slowly  sinking  into  ruin, 
both  from  weakness  within,  bad  methods  of  finance,  a 
poverty-stricken  middle  class,  the  concentration  of 
all  wealth  in  the  hands  of  a  few,  a  hopeless  bureau- 
cracy, the  stereotyping  of  all  society  into  hereditary 
castes,  an  army  of  hireling  barbarians — more  terrible 
to  its  masters  than  to  its  enemies — and  by  attacks 
from  without.  The  despotism  of  the  Empire  "  as  it 
grew  old  became  at  once  feebler  and  more  vexatious, 
exhausting  a  world  which  it  could  not  even  defend. 
It  weighed  upon  all,  and  protected  none."^  "The 
ancient  world,"  writes  Haruack,  "had  arrived,  by 
all  the  routes  of  its  complicated  development,  at 
the  bitterest  criticism  of  and  disgust  at  its  own  ex- 
* Montalembert,  "  Monks  of  the  West,"  Vol.  I,  p.  197. 


50  THE  CHURCH 

istence.  *  *  *  The  fabric  of  Eoman  society  and  adminis- 
tration in  the  foui'th  and  fifth  centuries  was  houey- 
combed  by  moral  and  economic  vices.  Christianity 
had  not  as  yet  cured  evils,  so  much  as  made  the 
more  thoughtful  conscious  of  their  presence,  and  of 
the  tremendous  organized  system  which  seemed 
bound  up  with  them.  Of  the  fourth  and  fifth  cen- 
turies, equally  with  the  first,  is  the  description  of 
Arnold  true : 

"  On  that  hard,  pagan  world 

Disgust,  and  secret  loathing  fell ; 
Deep  weariness,  and  sated  lust, 
Made  human  life  a  hell." 

A  protest  was  bound  to  come  and  when  it  came  to 
take  the  form  of  a  reaction  from  the  State  to  the 
individual.  We  see  a  similar  revolt  in  the  early 
days  that  followed  the  break  up  of  Greek  civic  inde- 
pendence, and  the  substitution  of  imperialism.  Phi- 
losophers despaired  of  the  republic,  and  found  a  new 
subject  for  thought  in  the  individual  man.  So  once 
again  a  protest  was  made,  no  longer  by  schools  of 
Stoics  and  Epicureans,  but  by  the  noblest  souls 
within  the  Church.'  Unfortunately  the  protest  be- 
came a  counsel  of  despair.  That  serviceable  men 
were  withdrawn  from  the  service  of  the  army  might 
have  been  viewed  with  indifference  ;  that  so  many 
men  of  brains  and  character  were  withdrawn  from 
civic  and  domestic  life,  at  a  time  when  their  services 
would  have  been  invaluable  in  the  defense  of  civili- 
zation and  Christianity  itself,  was  a  disaster  nowhere 
felt  more  than  in  Egypt  and  Syria.  There  the  rush 
^Harnack,  '*  History  of  Doctrine,"  Vol.  Ill,  p.  127. 


ITS  TASK  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  5 1 

to  tlie  monasteries,  or  to  the  solitudes  of  the  desert, 
ultimately  resolved  itself  into  the  suicide  of  a  nation. 
Another  unfortunate  cause  of  weakness  in  the 
Eastern  Empire,  explanatory  therefore  of  the  tri- 
umph of  Islam,  was  the  iconoclastic  controversy. 
After  the  loss  of  Syria  and  Egypt  the  further  en- 
croachments of  Islam  were  arrested  by  one  of  the 
greatest  of  Eastern  emperors,  Leo  the  Syrian,^  by 
birth  a  rough  peasant  of  Asia  Minor,  and  by  Leo's 
son  Constantine  V.  Unfortunately  Leo  was  not  con- 
tent with  his  military  task.  Like  Heraclius,  and 
with  the  same  fatal  results,  he  plunged  into  ecclesi- 
astical controversy.  The  crusade  of  Leo  against  the 
'•'■  eikons ''  or  sacred  pictures  was  only  part  of  his 
general  programme  for  infusing  new  life  into  the 
realm,  driving  back  the  Saracens,  and  recovering  the 
lost  provinces  of  the  Cross.  To  attribute  to  Leo 
heretical  notions,  e.  ^.,  the  denial  of  the  humanity 
of  Christ,  is  a  charge  without  proof.  On  the  other 
hand  it  is  probable  that  he  considered  that  the  vic- 
torious career  of  Islam  was  due  to  her  hatred  of 
idolatry.  Islam  would  neither  allow  images  nor 
even  copies  of  natural  objects.  Leo  determined  to 
make  use  of  the  same  secret  of  strength.  But  Leo 
was  before  his  age,  alike  in  his  desire  for  a  less  super- 
stitious Christianity,  in  his  abolition  of  serfdom,  and 
his  efforts  to  develop  a  strong  yeomanry  by  a  reform 
of  the  land  laws.  The  evils  sanctified  by  time  could 
not  be  corrected  even  by  his  master  hand.  His  at- 
tempted religious  reforms  were  mere  personal  move- 
ments, antagonistic  to  all  popular  feeling ;  nor  did 
he  attempt  to  substitute  a  living  enthusiasm  in  the 
*  Commonly  but  erroneously  called  the  Isaurian. 


52  THE  CHURCH 

place  of  the  superstition  he  destroyed.  After  a  long 
struggle  iconoclasm  failed,  and  the  images  were  re- 
stored, chiefly  through  the  agency  of  female  sover- 
eigns. The  consolidation  which  had  been  the  work 
of  the  great  iconoclasts  produced  its  results  in  large 
acquisitions  from  the  Saracens,  by  the  Basilian  dy- 
nasty (867-1057),  of  lost  territories  both  in  Asia  and 
Europe.  But  the  persecuting  tyranny  of  the  Icono- 
clasts had  estranged  the  people  from  sovereigns  who 
might  otherwise  have  consolidated  the  forces  of  the 
Empire.  The  Empire  was  torn  asunder  just  at  a 
time  when  it  most  needed  its  full  strength. 

In  Spain  also — another  great  centre  of  Islam  con- 
quest as  Dr.  Hodgkin  has  pointed  out — the  Church 
had  drawn  to  itself  the  whole  power  of  the  State 
and  was  chiefly  concerned  with  uprooting  Judaism. 
^'Shem  was  to  take  a  fearful  revenge.  True  the 
revenge  came  not  from  the  race  of  Isaac,  but  from 
their  kinsmen  of  the  deserts.  But  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  rapid  success  of  the  Saracens  was  due 
in  part  at  least  to  their  secret  understanding  with  the 
Jews.  The  soil  was  mined  under  the  feet  of  its 
Gothic  lords. '^ 

Thus  the  victory  of  Islam,  though  still  a  mystery, 
is  not  yet  wholly  unrelated  to  moral  causes.  Broadly 
stated,  it  was  the  triumph  in  a  new  debased  form  of 
the  old  Jewish  monotheism  against  a  church  which 
had  buried  the  living  Christ  in  a  grave  of  words  ;  at 
the  same  time  it  was  the  accommodation  of  religion 
to  the  common  man.  Such  accommodation  could 
never  have  been  won  in  a  Church  which  had  not  al- 
ready lost  touch  with  the  spiritual  realities.  The 
victory  was  completed  when  Muhammad  granted  to 


ITS  TASK  IN   THE   MIDDLE  AGES  53 

his  Christian  subjects  the  security  of  their  persons, 
the  freedom  of  their  trade,  and  a  limited  toleration  of 
their  worship.  By  this  astute,  though  temporary, 
move  Islam  secured  the  mastery  over  the  divided  and 
warriug  creeds  of  the  Cross  greater  than  any  that 
could  have  been  purchased  by  the  sword.  And  it  is 
still  the  divided  state,  as  in  the  days  of  the  crusade, 
that  gives  Islam  such  power  as  she  still  possesses. 


LECTURE  II 

THE  DAWNING  OF  THE 
MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUS- 
NESS   OF    THE    CHURCH 


LECTURE  II 

THE  DAWNING  OF  THE  MISSIONARY 
CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  THE  CHURCH 

I 

IN  our  last  lecture  we  dwelt  at  some  length  upon 
the  extent  of  the  task  which  awaited  the  Church 
as  the  result  of  the  barbarian  invasions,  and  of 
the  fall  of  the  Empire.  In  our  present  lecture  we 
shall  confine  ourselves  to  the  efforts  made  by  the 
Church  to  bring  the  heathen  within  her  fold.  For  it 
is  the  chief  glory  of  the  Church,  both  in  the  East  and 
West,  that  amid  all  weakness  and  faults  her  sous 
have  never  forgotten  the  last  commission  of  Jesus. 
Nor  will  the  student  inquire  too  carefully  what  meas- 
ure of  self-seeking  and  political  aggrandizement  may 
have  been  mixed  with  her  purer  motives.  He  will 
recognize  that  in  the  harvest-field  of  Christ  the  tares 
and  the  wheat  grow  together  ;  that  not  all  is  good, 
while  all  is  far  from  being  evil.  We  will  rejoice  over 
the  conquests  of  the  Cross,  that  notwithstanding  every 
way  Christ  is  preached  ;  though  he  may  mourn  over 
the  wide  difference  which  separates  the  holiest  of  the 
soldiers  of  the  Church  from  the  one  Divine  Pattern. 
You  will  not  expect  from  me  any  detailed  study  of 
the  various  missions,  or  of  the  heroes  of  the  Cross 
whom  they  produced.  The  subject  alone  would  de- 
mand a  book  ;  a  single  lecture  would  be  absurdly 

57 


58    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

inadequate.  We  must  conteut  ourselves  with  point- 
iug  out  the  mainjfeatures  and  results  of  the  mission- 
ary movements  of  the  early  Middle  Ages. 

The  first  matter  that  we  should  note  is  this.  In 
the  mission-field,  as  in  life  in  general,  the  tide  of  ad- 
vance is  invariably  followed  by  periods  of  ebb.  The 
Church,  as  much  as  the  individual,  seems  incapable 
of  living  for  long  in  a  state  of  intense  spiritual  ear- 
nestness, without  suffering  the  inevitable  reaction. 
But  for  this  reaction  there  is  another  cause  besides 
the  psychological.  The  periods  of  missionary  advance 
are  periods  of  picturesque  activity  which  arrest  atten- 
tion by  their  great  personalities.  Such  advance  is 
useless  unless  followed  by  a  period  of  consolidation, 
none  the  less  valuable  because  monotonous.  The  pio- 
neers who  first  blazed  their  way  through  the  virgin 
forests  of  your  mighty  continent,  crossed  the  moun- 
tains to  the  blue  grass  of  Kentucky,  or  caught  sight 
of  the  great  Father  of  Waters,  have  left  names  behind 
them  enshrined  forever  on  the  pages  of  history.  Not 
so  with  those  who  following  in  their  steps  settled  the 
country,  turning  the  wilderness  into  a  garden,  and 
the  prairies  into  cities  crowded  with  culture.  So 
with  the  Church.  The  great  missionary  pioneers  are 
immortal,  nor  do  we  lessen  their  renown  when  we 
point  out  the  centuries  of  more  humdrum  work  which 
necessarily  followed  their  activity.  But  the  toilers 
in  these  centuries  are  for  the  most  part  voiceless  and 
unknown.     Yet  their  works  do  follow  them. 

Christian  missions  form  themselves  into  certain  well- 
defi  ned  epochs.  There  was  first  of  all  the  great  effort, 
which  we  owe  above  all  to  the  genius  of  St.  Paul,  to 
win  the  Eoman  Empire  for  the  Cross.     But  that  mis- 


OF  THE  CHURCH  59 

sion  falls  outside  our  period.  Suffice  to  note  in  pass- 
ing one  matter  that  will  arise  in  our  consideration  of 
other  missions.  Christianity  conquered  the  Empire 
by  weapons  that  were  not  altogether  spiritual.  When 
Constantine  adopted  Christianity  as  the  religion  of 
the  State,  the  Christians,  relatively  speaking,  were 
few  in  number.  If  we  estimate  the  population  of  the 
Empire  as  between  fifty  and  sixty  millions,  the  Chris- 
tians in  the  Empire  at  the  moment  of  their  triumj)h 
did  not  form  one-tenth  of  the  whole.  They  were,  in 
fact,  less  numerous  than  the  Jews.  But  that  great 
opportunist  Constantine  made  the  religion  of  this 
small  section  the  religion  of  the  whole  Empire  be- 
cause it  was  the  only  religion,  except  the  outworn 
apotheosis  of  Eome  and  Augustus,  that  was  capable 
of  becoming  universal.  But  vast  as  might  seem  to 
be  the  gain  of  the  Church,  there  was  corresponding 
loss.  Hitherto  Christianity  had  been  a  church  of 
martyrs  and  enthusiasts,  and  the  key-note  had  been 
pitched  accordingly.  Now  it  became  the  cult  of  a 
multitude  of  conformists  upon  whose  life  and  morals 
it  had  little  real  hold.  If  the  new  Constantinople 
was  from  the  first  a  Christian  city,  yet  in  Eome  her- 
self, for  long  years  after  the  nominal  conversion  of 
the  Empire,  paganism  was  still  the  professed  creed 
of  the  majority  of  the  Senate,  while  in  the  country 
parts  paganism,  nominally  abandoned,  entrenched 
herself,  with  little  change,  in  the  Church  itself. 

Turning  away  from  the  Empire  to  our  proper  sub- 
ject we  note  that  the  first  missionary  successes  of  the 
Church  were  won  by  heretics.  We  have  already  re- 
ferred to  the  work  of  Ulphilas  the  Arian  apostle  of 
the  Goths  (c.  360).     He  was  the  forerunner  of  those 


6o    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

missioDaries  who  wou  over  to  the  faith  the  Biirgundi- 
ans  iu  Gaul,  the  Suevi  iu  Spain,  the  Vandals  in  Af- 
rica, and  the  Ostrogoths  iu  Pannonia.  These  mis- 
sionaries for  the  most  part,  whether  from  conviction 
or  from  political  i)ressure,  were  Arians,  and  Arian- 
ism  was  thus  adopted  as  the  national  faith  of  the 
warlike  converts  who  had  overthrown  the  Western 
Empire. 

The  success  of  these  Arian  missionaries  is  not 
difficult  to  explain.  The  temper  and  understanding 
of  the  new  converts  were  not  adapted  to  the  meta- 
physical subtleties  of  the  so-called  Athanasian  Creed. 
Arianism  with  its  reduction  of  Christ  to  a  demi-god, 
with  its  popular  methods  of  appeal,  including  much 
use  of  song,  with  its  facile  logic  that  seemed  to  ex- 
plain the  unthinkable,  found  as  quick  a  response 
among  the  heathen  as  it  had  already  achieved  in  the 
Empire,  among  the  thousands  of  nominal  converts  to 
Christianity.  For  the  barbarian  it  was  a  half-way 
halting  place  in  their  conversion  to  Christianity. 
Arianism  was  really  an  accommodation  to  heathen 
conceptions.  For  the  pagan  of  culture  the  question 
at  issue  was  whether  two  weaker  and  subordinate 
gods,  holding  their  existence  precariously  at  the  will 
of  the  Father,  very  little  different  from  the  philo- 
sophical triad  or  duad  of  Philo,  Plotinus  and  the 
Neoplatonists,  should  be  interposed  between  the  diety 
and  mankind.  For  in  plain  English  that  was  really 
the  meaning  of  the  Arian  formula  as  regards  Chris- 
tianity ^v  cJre  6oi£  rjv  *^ there  was  when  He  was  not" 
— with  its  necessary  consequence  as  to  the  Holy 
Spirit,  in  spite  of  all  refinements  about  leaving  out 
the  conception  of  time  and  the  rest.     Now  such  a 


OF  THE  CHURCH  6l 

conception  did  not  differ  fundamentally  from  the 
heathen  idea  of  a  supreme  Zeus  or  Woden  with  their 
lesser  attendant  deities.  Carlyle,  certainly  no  preju- 
diced observer,  was  right  when  he  stated:  ^'If 
Arianism  had  won,  Christianity  would  have  dwindled 
into  a  legend."  Nevertheless,  just  because  it  was  a 
half-way  house,  Arianism  had  its  mission.  When 
that  was  accomplished  it  vanished. 

For  this  supersession  of  Arianism  there  were  many 
causes.  We  may  believe  that  just  as  the  Church  of 
the  Empire  was  driven  in  spite  of  herself  to  eradicate 
the  Arian  taint,  so  sooner  or  later  any  Arian  nation 
had  to  purge  itself  of  heresy  or  vanish  from  the  earth. 
Certain  it  is  that  though  Arianism  has  again  and 
again  in  diverse  forms  laid  its  spell  on  the  thought- 
ful, yet  it  has  never  succeeded  in  holding  the 
allegiance  of  the  many.  Nations  and  congregations 
which  have  embraced  it  have  for  the  most  part 
withered  away. 

Historically  we  may  trace  the  decay  of  Arianism 
to  the  power  of  the  Salian  Franks.  At  the  age  of 
twenty  the  precocious  genius  of  Clovis  (Chlodoweg) 
overthrew  the  last  remains  of  Eoman  power  in  Gaul, 
then  turned  to  carry  on  a  great  war  with  the  Alemanui 
of  the  southeast.  He  vowed  to  accept  the  faith  if  the 
White  Christ  would  give  him  the  victory.  The 
victory  came,  the  ''White  Christ"  was  evidently  the 
mightier  God.  So  on  Christmas  Day  496  Clovis  and 
tliree  thousand  of  his  warriors  were  solemnly  received 
into  the  Church  at  Eheims.  The  eloquent  Remigius 
held  up  before  him  the  cross:  "Adore,"  said  he, 
*'that  which  you  have  hitherto  burned,  burn  the 
idols  that  you  have  hitherto  adored."    As  the  Bishop 


62    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

enlarged  on  the  passion  and  death  of  Jesus,  Clovis 
could  restrain  himself  no  longer.  '^  Had  I,'^  he  burst 
out,  ' '  been  present  at  the  head  of  my  valiant  Franks, 
J.  would  have  revenged  his  injuries." 

The  baptism  of  Clovis  was  the  result  of  supersti- 
tion. He  had  embraced  Christianity  because  of  its 
stronger  supernatural  support.  His  orthodoxy  was 
a  matter  of  political  calculation.  By  the  help  of  the 
Catholic  Church  he  determined  to  overthrow  his 
rivals,  Visgoths,  Ostrogoths,  Vandals,  and  Burgun- 
dians,  all  of  whom  were  Arians.  When  in  507  he 
attacked  the  Visgoths,  *Mt  is  a  shame, '^  he  is  re- 
ported to  have  said,  ^'  that  these  Arians  should  hold 
a  part  of  Gaul ;  let  us  attack  them  with  God's  help 
and  take  their  land."  Thus  a  religious  sanction  was 
given  to  his  ambition,  while  his  restless  but  orthodox 
sons  and  grandsons  extended  his  rule  from  the  forests 
of  Thuringia  and  Bavaria  to  the  ocean.  But  the 
supreme  triumph  of  the  Franks,  as  well  as  their 
greatest  service  to  Christianity,  was  when  in  732 
Charles  Martel  brought  the  green  standard  of  the 
Prophet  to  a  halt  upon  the  Loire,  and  so  saved 
Europe  from  the  Muslim  domination. 

The  successful  missions  of  other  unorthodox 
branches  of  the  Church  besides  the  Arian  must  not 
be  overlooked.  Prominent  among  these  we  place 
the  [Nestorians.  Persecuted  in  the  Greek  Empire 
they  turned  to  the  East  and  scattered  missionary  sees 
over  a  vast  area  of  Central  and  Eastern  Asia.  In 
Syria,  Armenia  and  Arabia,  on  the  shores  of  the 
Caspian,  in  Great  Tartary  where  in  1274  Marco  Polo 
found  two  Kestorian  churches  still  existing,  and  in 
distant  China  itself,  they  established  centres  of  Chris- 


OF  THE  CHURCH  63 

tianity  that  have  long  since  been  swept  away  in  the 
deluge  of  Mongolian  invasions,  or  stamped  out  by 
the  Muslim.  The  most  important  of  the  Nestorian 
missions  that  still  exist  is  the  ancient  Christian 
Church  of  Malabar,  the  origin  of  which  is  assigned 
by  local  tradition  to  St.  Thomas  the  Apostle,  but 
which  really  was  the  work  of  a  Nestorian  missionary 
of  the  same  name.  In  the  sixth  century  a  noted 
traveller,  the  merchant  Cosmas  of  Alexandria,  found 
in  Ceylon,  to  his  surprise,  another  congregation  of 
Persian  Christians,  i.  e.,  of  exiled  i^estorians.  Even 
more  interesting  is  the  testimony  to  their  activity  in 
China.  In  1625  the  Jesuits  discovered  a  large  tablet 
at  Signanfu,  the  old  capital  of  China,  which  set  forth 
in  Syriac  and  Chinese  the  story  of  a  Nestorian  mis- 
sion. From  this  tablet  we  learn  later  that  in  636  a 
missionary  named  Olopau  came  from  Syria,  was 
lodged  in  the  imperial  palace,  and  established  a 
church  which  met  with  much  success.  Sixty  years 
later  there  arose  a  great  persecution  which  lasted  for 
fourteen  years.  Then  again  there  was  peace,  and  a 
period  of  considerable  prosperity.  But  of  all  that 
early  Chinese  Christianity  there  is  now  no  survival 
save  this  tablet.  The  great  work  of  the  conversion 
of  China,  which  made  so  fair  a  start,  more  than  1,000 
years  ago,  has  still  to  be  accomplished. 

II 

In  the  more  orthodox  conflict  of  Christ  and 
heathenism  we  note  three  centres  of  missionary  ac- 
tivity. Constantinople  claimed  the  East,  and  Eome 
the  West,  but  for  a  while  Eome  was  forced  to  share 
her  conquests  with  Armagh.     The  story  of  the  Irish 


64    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

missions  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  pages  of  sacred 
history.  In  Italy,  France,  and  Spain,  Christianity 
had  almost  exhausted  itself  in  its  straggle  with  bar- 
barian and  Saracen.  Ireland,  whose  miseries  were 
yet  to  come,  alone  seemed  to  preserve  unimpaired  the 
light  and  life  of  the  early  faith.  This  was  her  golden 
age  ;  her  familiar  title  was  the  island  of  *'  the  saints.'^ 
But  the  *' saints,"  whether  of  the  First,  Second,  or 
Third  order,  almost  without  exception  were  hermits 
and  monks.  Irish  Christianity  was  essentially  "  mon- 
astic "  Christianity,  in  which  the  bishop  as  such  had 
little  authority,  and  where  ^'monasticism '^  was  but 
another  name  for  the  community  life  of  the  clan 
turned  religious,  with  the  head  of  the  clan  as  the 
abbot  of  the  monastery  or  group  of  monasteries,  e.  g.^ 
Clonmacnoise  or  Glendalough — for  the  clan  could  not 
dwell  in  one  building  or  place,  especially  with  the 
lapse  of  years.  But  just  because  of  this  very  ''mon- 
asticism  "  the  Irish  Church  was  essentially  a  mission- 
ary Church.  The  enormous  number  of  inmates  in 
these  grouped  monasteries,  2,000  at  Bangor,  5,000  at 
Clonfer,  and  so  on,  compelled  them  to  leave.  Just 
as  in  later  years  the  Irish  were  driven  over  the  seas 
as  emigrants  to  the  New  World  by  the  narrow  exi- 
gencies of  life  in  the  old  home,  so  these  huge  clan- 
monasteries,  unable  to  support  their  numbers,  shed 
their  more  adventurous  spirits. 

This  emigration  of  the  saints  was  possible  through 
a  special  feature  of  Celtic  Monasticism.  In  the  Mon- 
asticism  of  the  West  there  was  no  law  upon  which 
greater  insistence  was  placed,  especially  after  Bene- 
dict, than  that  of  ^'stability,"  i.  e.,  the  fixed  domicile 
of  the  monk.     The  wandering  monk  was  sternly  sup- 


OF  THE   CHURCH  65 

pressed — until,  indeed,  he  reappeared  with  papal  sanc- 
tion in  the  wandering  friar.  But  in  Celtic  Monasti- 
cism  we  are  struck  from  the  first  with  its  extraordi- 
nary restlessness — in  many  respects,  no  doubt,  the 
reflection  of  the  general  restlessness  of  the  Celtic 
populations,  especially  in  Ireland.  A  nomad  at 
home,  the  Scoto-Irish  colonized  the  northern  parts 
of  Scotland  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries,  giving 
to  that  land,  hitherto  known  as  Caledonia,  his  own 
Irish  name,  while  traces  of  his  wanderings  a  thou- 
sand years  before  the  Christian  era  are  found  in  the 
burial  mounds  of  Scandinavia.  Of  this  restlessness 
the  typical  hero  is  the  monk  Brendan  (+577),  who 
crossed  the  ocean  "  through  a  thick  fog  "  that  he 
might  find  an  earthly  paradise  "  beyond  which 
shone  an  eternal  clearness."  ^  From  the  greater 
monastic  settlements  of  Wales  and  Ireland  there 
poured  forth  a  succession  of  Celtic  enthusiasts  who 
carried  their  religion  and  their  mouasticism  to  far-off 
places  the  names  of  which  still  preserve  their  mem- 
ories. Chief  of  these  we  may  instance  St.  David,  by 
whom,  it  was  believed,  twelve  monasteries  in  succes- 
sion were  founded ;  to  whom,  above  all  others,  has 
gone  forth  the  reverence  of  the  Welsh. 

In  this  restlessness  Celtic  Monasticism  was  power- 
fully assisted  by  a  current  political  movement.  In 
the  fifth  century,  owing  first  to  Pictish  and  Irish  in- 
vasions, followed  at  a  later  date  by  pressui-e  from  the 

*Ib  may  interest  an  American  audience  to  know  that  the  tale  of 
Bieudau's  two  voyages  was  worked  up  into  a  popular  romance  by- 
Irish  monks  on  the  Lower  Rhine  in  the  early  part  of  the  eleventh 
century.  As  this  became  very  popular  in  Spain  it  may  have  in- 
spired Columbus. 


66    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

Saxons,  and  from  the  distress  caused  by  a  great 
plague  in  647,  we  find  a  steady  emigration  of  the 
British  to  Armorica,  a  land  henceforth  to  be  known 
under  its  new  name  of  Brittany.  The  leaders  in  this 
emigration  were  monks,  and  the  witchery  of  their 
lives — that  constant  witchery  of  Monasticism,  to  us, 
perhaps,  so  inexplicable,  to  the  early  and  mediaeval 
Church  so  real — drew  others  after  them.  The  emi- 
grating saints  were  usually  accompanied  by  numer- 
ous followers.  They  found  Armorica  largely  a  desert, 
almost  wholly  heathen,  its  cities  burned  without  in- 
habitant, made  desert  by  the  Empire  itself,  owing  to 
many  years  of  crushing  imperial  taxation  extorted 
by  selfish  officials,  and  because  of  the  ravages  of  bar- 
barian hordes.  In  the  dense  forests  that  ran  down  to 
the  coast  the  British  monks  established  their  clear- 
ings or  lans^  in  which  their  rude  huts  and  chapels 
mark  the  beginning  of  later  villages  that  bear  to  this 
day  the  names  of  these  first  settlers. 

Even  more  conspicuous  than  Britain  in  its  mission- 
ary and  monastic  enterprises  was  the  Celtic  Church 
in  Ireland.  In  the  sixth  century  we  find  the  Irish 
Church,  untroubled  by  the  disasters  which  were  over- 
whelming the  sister  island,  full  of  activity  and  re- 
source. Embracing  Christianity  with  Celtic  ardour, 
the  Irish  monasteries  became,  for  a  while,  the  centres 
in  the  West  of  ancient  civilization  and  learning,  re- 
taining even  some  knowledge  of  Greek,  a  language 
almost  unknown  elsewhere.  In  the  early  years  of  the 
ninth  century  whoever  knew  Greek  on  the  Continent 
was  either  an  Irish  monk  or  taught  by  an  Irish  monk. 
The  last  representative  of  the  Greek  spirit  in  the 
West  and  one  of  the  earliest  torch-bearers  in  the 


OF  THE  CHURCH  67 

long  line  of  Christian  mystics,  by  his  very  greatness 
unintelligible  to  the  men  of  his  generation,  was  John 
Scotus  Eriugena  the  Erin-born,  who  about  the  year 
847  drifted  from  Ireland  and  settled  at  the  court  of 
that  patron  of  scholars,  Charles  the  Bald. 

In  the  middle  of  the  sixth  century,  especially,  we 
note  a  wonderful  outburst  of  Irish  enthusiasm.  Mon- 
astery after  monastery  was  founded,  and  from  these 
there  poured  out  a  succession  of  daring  missionaries. 
In  their  flimsy  coracles  they  crossed  the  stormy  seas 
to  Brittany,  where,  among  the  Breton  saints  of  the 
sixth  and  seventh  centuries,  we  find  more  than  a 
dozen  whose  names  are  Irish.  Others  sought  for 
seclusion  from  the  world  by  escaping  to  the  barren 
islands  off  the  western  coast  of  Ireland  where  the 
roar  of  the  Atlantic  and  the  screams  of  the  gulls 
alone  would  disturb  their  devotions.  When  these 
became  crowded  with  devotees  they  put  out  into 
northern  seas  that  they  might  find  some  new  desert 
in  the  ocean.  The  Hebrides,  the  Orkneys,  the  Shet- 
lands,  even  lonely  St.  Kilda  and  distant  Iceland  it- 
self were  all  reached  by  these  adventurous  wan- 
derers, who  carried  everywhere  their  Irish  monasti- 
cism  as  well  as  their  Irish  culture  and  their  Irish 
manuscripts. 

Some  of  these  wandering  Irish  missionary -monks 
deserve  the  passing  tribute  of  our  mention.  From  the 
Faroe  Islands  and  Iceland  to  the  plains  of  Italy,  from 
the  shores  of  the  ocean  to  the  sources  of  the  Ehine 
and  the  Danube,  we  find  them  everywhere,  workiug 
with  an  enthusiasm  that  must  not  be  judged  by  the 
absence  of  permanence  in  their  results.  The  re- 
puted pioneer  of  the  host  was  Fridolin,  whose  Irish 


68    DAWiNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

birthplace  is  unknown.  From  Poictiers,  his  first 
halting-place,  he  passed  by  the  Moselle  and  Stras- 
burg,  founding  churches  dedicated  to  St.  Hilary,  first 
to  Glarus,  a  canton  in  Switzerland  which  still  retains 
in  its  coat  of  arms  the  trace  of  his  presence,  and 
finally  to  Sackingen,  near  Basle,  where  he  built  a 
double  monastery  of  monks  and  nuns  of  the  usual 
Celtic  type. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  sixth  century  we  come 
across  the  greatest  of  these  missionaries,  Columba  and 
Columban.  Columba,  the  descendant  of  Irish  kings,  in 
whose  character  we  see  at  all  times  the  imperiousuess 
of  his  high  birth,  was  born  at  Gartan,  among  the 
mountains  of  Donegal  (7th  Dec.  521).  On  his  bap- 
tism he  changed  his  name  of  Crimthann  or  "wolf" 
for  that  of  Colum  or  "dove.^^  After  founding  sun- 
dry monasteries  in  the  north  of  Ireland,  Columba, 
desiring  to  go  into  exile  for  the  sake  of  Christ,  set  off, 
in  563,  with  a  band  of  twelve  companions  to  preach 
the  Gospel  to  the  emigrant  Scots.  Crossing  the  seas 
in  a  currach  of  wickerwork  covered  with  hides,  Co- 
lumba finally  landed  on  the  barren  shores  of  Hi  or 
lona,  a  small  island  on  the*  border-line  between  the 
kingdoms  of  the  Scots  and  Picts.  There  he  founded 
the  famous  monastery  which  was  destined  to  become 
the  centre  of  Christian  missions  in  the  north  of  Brit- 
ain. There,  after  thirty  years  of  arduous  life,  the 
call  came.  As  Columba  climbed  for  the  last  time  the 
little  hill  above  the  monastery  he  lifted  up  his  hands 
in  blessing.  "This  place,"  he  said,  "is  small  and 
of  no  reputation  ;  yet  even  the  rulers  of  strange  na- 
tions with  their  subjects  shall  confer  great  honours  on 
it. "     During  the  brief  watches  of  the  night  he  gave 


OF  THE  CHURCH  69 

to  his  disciples  his  last  message  **  to  be  at  peace  and 
have  sincere  love  one  to  another."  At  daybreak  he 
arose  with  the  rest,  and  on  his  knees  passed  quickly 
away  amidst  a  blaze  of  summer  light  (June  597).  A 
week  before  his  death,  the  baptism  of  the  Kentish 
king  Ethelbert,  away  down  in  the  far  south,  marked 
the  success  of  the  Eoman  mission  of  Augustine. 

From  Hi  the  Irish  monks  carried  the  Gospel  as  far 
south  as  the  Humber.  Their  organization,  as  usual, 
was  monastic  rather  than  episcopal,  the  various  mon- 
asteries they  founded  all  looking  upon  lona  as  their 
head.  In  635  their  leader,  Aidan,  fixed  his  bishop- 
stool  on  the  island-peninsular  of  Lindisfarne.  From 
this  monastery  monks  journeyed  far  and  wide.  For 
a  few  years  the  spell  which  Ireland  cast  over  Eng- 
land, especially  in  the  north,  was  almost  irresistible. 
One  Scoto-Irish  monk,  Dicul,  made  his  way  with  five 
comrades  to  where  the  South  Saxons  still  clung  to 
their  paganism,  severed  by  the  dense  forests  that 
clothed  the  Wealds  from  the  forces  that  were  redeem- 
ing the  rest  of  England.  Another,  the  son  of  a  prince 
ef  Muuster,  established  amongst  the  East  Saxons 
the  monastery;  Fursey,  the  village  of  which  still 
bears  his  name.  A  third  Irish  scholar,  Maildulf,  set 
up  his  hermitage  and  school  in  the  midst  of  the  forest 
that  cut  off  the  latest  conquests  of  the  West  Saxons 
from  the  then  borders  of  Welshland.  His  name  is 
still  preserved  in  the  ^ ' Maildulf 's  burgh"  (Malmes- 
bury)  which  gathered  round  his  monastery.  It  was 
also  from  the  Irish  mission-station  of  Old  Melrose 
that  Cuthbert,  himself  a  peasant  of  the  Lowlands, 
than  whom  no  saint  has  left  a  deeper  impression  on 
the  memory  of  the  northern  English,  set  off  to  pro- 


70    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

claim  the  story  of  the  Cross  in  the  remoter  villages  of 
the  Cheviots,  as  yet  unreached  in  their  heathenism. 

What  Columba  did  for  Britain,  the  masterful  and 
overbearing  Columban  attempted  to  do  for  Gaul  j 
and  for  Columban  as  for  Columba  the  final  result  was 
the  same.  Columban  was  born  in  Leinster  in  543. 
At  the  age  of  forty  he  was  inflamed  with  missionary 
zeal,  and  with  twelve  companions  crossed  over  to 
Gaul  (585).  There,  after  several  years  of  wandering, 
he  built  a  monastery,  first  in  a  ruined  Roman  fort 
(Anagray)  where  oftentimes  the  monks  had  nothing 
to  eat.  But  soon  the  numbers  so  grew  that  he  was 
forced  to  build  a  larger  monastery  amid  the  extensive 
ruins  of  an  old  Roman  town,  Luxeuil  in  the  Yosges, 
reduced  by  Attila  to  ashes,  and  overgrown  by  the 
jungle.  There  he  organized  a  service  where  night 
and  day  the  voices  of  the  brethren  *' unwearied  as 
those  of  the  angels"  arose  in  unending  song. 

As  Columban  maintained  the  Celtic  usages  against 
the  Roman,  the  jealousy  of  the  Frankish  bishops 
was  furnished  with  a  suitable  weapon  of  offense. 
But  his  enemies  could  have  accomplished  little  had 
not  Columban  lost  the  favour  of  the  royal  house 
by  his  outspoken  rebukes  of  the  infamous  queen- 
grandmother,  Brunhild,  and  of  what  he  called  her 
^* brothel-breed."  So  in  610  he  was  banished  from 
Luxeuil,  and  after  a  vain  attempt  on  the  part  of  his 
enemies  to  ship  him  back  from  Nantes  to  Ireland,  he 
wandered  up  the  Rhine  to  Zug  in  Switzerland.  Ban- 
ished thence  by  the  people  for  setting  fire  to  one 
of  their  temples,  Columban  established  himself  at 
Bregenz.  There  we  see  him,  assisted  by  St.  Gall, 
with  characteristic  impetuosity,  breaking  the  vats  in 


OF  THE  CHURCH  7I 

"which  the  heathen  brewed  their  beer  for  Woden,  and 
throwing  the  gilded  idols  into  Lake  Constance. 
When  driven  thence  by  the  fury  of  the  priests,  or 
by  the  revenge  of  Brunhild,  his  faith  did  not  falter. 
"The  God  whom  we  serve,"  said  he,  "will  lead  us 
elsewhere. "  So  Columban  crossed  the  Alps  and  spent 
the  last  two  years  of  his  life  in  building  his  monas- 
tery of  Bobbio  in  a  gorge  of  the  Appennines,  near 
Genoa,  and  in  writing  tracts  against  the  Lombard 
Arians.  There  he  died  and  was  buried  (23d  Nov.  615). 
The  labours  of  Columban  were  followed  up  by 
those  of  other  evangelists.  From  their  monastery  of 
Luxeuil,  the  Irish  missionaries  spread  everywhere. 
One  of  these,  Dichuill,  found  his  way  through  the 
forests  of  Burgundy  to  where  now  stands  the  town  of 
Lure,  the  outgrowth  of  the  cell  that  he  first  es- 
tablished. Not  far  away  another  monastery,  under 
the  modern  form  of  St.  Die,  still  preserves  the  name 
of  this  Irish  saint.  Another  monk,  Kupert,  whether 
Irish  by  birth,  or  Frank  of  the  royal  house  brought 
up  under  Columban,  is  uncertain,  after  settling  for  a 
while  at  Worms,  struck  across  the  Danube  and  es- 
tablished himself  at  Salzburg,  while  another  Irish- 
man, Kilian,  crossed  the  Ehine  to  Wurzburg,  and 
was  there  murdered  with  his  two  companions  (July 
689).  Disen  (+674)  an  Irish-abbot-bishop,  after 
preaching  for  some  time  down  the  Ehine,  settled  near 
Mainz  in  a  monastery  that  has  given  his  name  to  the 
present  town  of  Disemberg.  No  monastery  of  the 
Middle  Ages  was  more  noted  than  that  of  St.  Gallen, 
in  Switzerland,  whose  library  still  remains  unsur- 
passed for  the  wealth  of  its  Irish  manuscripts.  Its 
name    commemorates    an    Irishman,   the  friend  of 


72    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

Columban,  brought  up  in  the  same  monastery  of 
Bangor,  who  accompanied  him  to  Luxeuil,  and  fol- 
lowed him,  when  driven  out  thence,  to  Zug  and 
Bregenz.  Before  his  preaching  in  the  native  dialects 
of  Swabia,  the  spirits  of  flood  and  fell  fled  wailing  up 
the  mountains,  crying,  as  with  the  voices  of  women, 
*' Where  shall  we  go?  for  he  prays  continually,  and 
never  sleeps."  When  in  612  Columban  left  Bregenz, 
Gall  remained  behind,  for  he  was  sick  of  a  fever. 
On  his  recovery  he  commenced  once  again  his  mis- 
sionary j  ourneys  in  Swabia.  One  evening  he  arrived 
at  the  place  where  the  torrent  of  the  Steinach  hollows 
for  itself  a  bed  in  the  rocks.  As  Gall  was  about  to 
kneel  in  prayer,  he  was  caught  by  a  thorn  bush,  and 
fell.  The  deacon  ran  to  his  assistance.  ^'No,"  said 
the  saint ;  ^'here  is  my  chosen  habitation,  here  is  my 
resting-place  forever."  So  he  arranged  two  hazel 
boughs  in  the  form  of  a  cross,  passed  the  night  in 
prayer,  and  began  the  next  day  to  build  a  monastery, 
which  in  later  times  gave  its  name  to  a  Swiss  canton, 
and  a  great  town. 

Ireland  indeed  at  that  time,  as  one  of  its  own 
chroniclers  puts  it,  was  *'full  of  saints."  But,  un- 
fortunately, the  enthusiasm  of  these  Celtic  missionaries 
was  not  combined  with  equal  resources  of  administra- 
tion. Within  a  century, of  their  establishment  all 
but  a  few  of  the  Irish  monasteries  had  been  driven 
to  capitulate  to  Eome  and  to  adopt  the  rival  Rule 
of  St.  Benedict.  In  818  Louis  the  Fair  forced  those 
which  still  clung  to  Celtic  usages  to  fall  into  line 
with  the  others.  The  fate  which  thus  attended 
Celtic  monasticism  in  its  missionary  efl"orts  abroad 
was  followed  by  the  disasters  at  home  of  the  Viking 


OF  THE  CHURCH  73 

invasions.  Plundering  hordes  of  Norse  and  Danish 
heathen  marked  down  the  monasteries  of  Britain  and 
Ireland  as  their  prey,  the  more  easily  inasmuch  as, 
especially  in  Ireland,  the  greater  number  lay  within 
easy  access  from  the  coast.  With  untiring  patience 
the  monks  again  and  again  rebuilt  their  monasteries, 
only  once  more  to  see  them  destroyed  by  fire.  When 
at  length  in  943  Christianity  was  once  again  nominally 
introduced  into  the  Norse  kingdom  which  the  Vi- 
kings had  established  round  Dublin,  it  was  too  late. 
The  golden  age  of  the  Irish  Church  had  passed  away 
in  an  era  of  blood  and  fire.  Her  libraries  had  been 
burnt,  her  education  ruined,  and  the  cultured  monks 
of  the  seventh  and  eighth  centuries  displaced  by  a 
clergy  inferior  both  in  ability  and  enthusiasm.  Such 
monasteries  as  survived  had  become  the  centres  of 
fierce  tribal  feud.  The  promise  of  the  early  morn 
had  passed  into  the  storm-clouds  that  have  ever 
since  overshadowed  the  ''ancient  land  of  saints  and 


III 

In  the  long  struggle  of  Eome  and  Armagh  the 
victory  was  won  by  Eome,  a  victory  so  complete  that 
in  later  years  the  original  St.  Patrick,  and  the 
church  he  had  founded,  became  lost  in  legends  in- 
vented for  her  own  purpose  by  Eome  herself.  What- 
ever may  have  been  the  influence  of  the  Celtic 
Church  it  was  Eome  alone  that  in  the  long  run 
reaped  the  harvest  of  credit  and  reward.  Others 
may  have  toiled ;  she  alone  entered  into  their 
labours. 

Into  the  story  of  the  Eomau  missions  it  is  needless 


74    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

that  we  enter  in  any  detail.  It  must  suffice  that  we 
point  out  the  main  factors  of  her  task  and  the  re- 
sults. In  the  first  place  we  may  note  that  the  later 
strength  of  the  medieval  papacy  really  rested  upon 
the  missionary  activity  of  Eome.  No  abstract  doc- 
trine of  the  primacy  of  Peter  would  have  established 
her  spiritual  supremacy  had  she  not  furnished  in  its 
support  true  soldiers  of  the  Cross.  Following  the 
lead  of  Dean  Milman  historians  are  wont  to  speak  of 
Gregory  the  Great  as  ^'  the  real  father  of  the  Mediaeval 
Papacy.''  The  title  is  indirectly  a  tribute  to  his  mis- 
sionary zeal,  for  the  greatest  of  his  works  were  his 
projects  for  the  conversion  of  the  heathen.  Never, 
in  fact,  was  the  need  for  missions  so  great  as  in  the 
three  centuries  which  followed  the  death  of  this 
Pope.  Gregory's  euterprise  came  only  just  in  time. 
If  Christianity,  humanly  speaking,  was  to  be  saved, 
it  could  only  be  by  persistent  aggression.  On  every 
hand  her  dominion  was  threatened,  her  borders 
straightened.  Only  by  the  vigorous  missionary  en- 
terprise of  her  sons  could  Christianity  win  a  new 
empire  in  place  of  the  kingdoms  she  had  lost.  Nor 
is  it  any  discount  from  the  gain  of  civilization  to  re- 
member that  in  thus  enlarging  the  borders  of  the 
Church  Eome  was  also  establishing  her  wider  au- 
thority. Antioch,  Alexandria,  Jerusalem,  had  per- 
ished ;  Constantinople  was  too  much  absorbed  in  her 
own  defenses ;  of  the  ancient  centres  of  Christianity 
Rome  alone  remained  to  wage  war  with  both  pagans 
and  Muslim,  and  to  gain  as  a  reward  new  dominions 
for  her  spiritual  Csesars. 

The  story  of  Gregory's  conversion  of  England  is  too 
well  known  to  need  repetition.     We  have  already 


OF  THE  CHURCH  75 

noted  the  influence  and  share  in  this  good  work  of 
the  Celtic  Church.  In  the  upshot  Eome  appropriated 
to  herself  the  labours  of  others.  We  cannot  deplore 
the  result.  Alone  of  all  the  countries  of  the  West, 
Ireland  had  formed  no  part  of  the  Eoman  Empire. 
Her  life,  laws,  and  customs,  thus  still  stagnated  in 
the  hopeless  clan  system  from  which  the  genius  of 
the  Empire  might  have  saved  her,  as  it  did  the  Celts 
of  France.  Irish  Christianity  was  without  Eome's 
two  great  gifts  of  cohesion  and  law  ;  Celtic  enthusiasm 
was  more  than  balanced  by  Celtic  anarchy.  If 
Armagh  had  won,  England  would  have  suffered  the 
fate  which  in  after  years  befell  Ireland.  She  would 
have  been  hopelessly  cut  off  from  those  civilizing 
influences  which  contact  with  a  wider  and  more 
organized  world  alone  can  give.  The  struggle  of 
Eome  with  her  Celtic  rival  was  ended  by  the  Synod 
of  Whitby  (664).  The  one  side  appealed  to  Columba, 
the  other  to  St.  Peter.  ''You  own,"  cried  King 
Oswiu,  wearied  with  the  interminable  arguments, 
*'  that  Christ  gave  to  Peter  the  keys  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  ;  did  He  give  any  such  power  to  Columba  ?  " 
On  hearing  the  reluctant  "No,"  "Then,"  said 
Oswiu,  "I  will  obey  the  porter  of  heaven,  lest  when 
I  reach  its  gates  he  should  shut  them  against  me.  '^ 
The  Irishmen,  in  disgust,  sailed  back  to  lona,  and 
the  English  Church,  hitherto  divided  in  allegiance 
and  usage,  was  henceforth  one  within  herself  and  in 
her  obedience  to  Eome.  The  arrival  as  archbishop 
of  Canterbury  of  the  Greek  monk  Theodore  of  Tarsus 
(669)  completed  the  conquest.  He  arranged  her  sees, 
brought  to  an  end  the  free  wanderings  of  her  earlier 
bishops,  made  episcopal  supervision  a  living  thing. 


76    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

and  established  national  synods,  whose  annual  meet- 
ings for  consultation  and  direction  showed  lines  of 
national  unity  and  development  that  led  in  later  days 
to  one  kingdom  under  one  Council  of  the  Wise.  The 
unity  of  the  Church  in  England,  in  fact,  antedated  by 
many  centuries  the  unity  of  the  realm.  The  triumph 
of  Eome  was  complete  when  Theodore  ordered  the 
reconsecration  of  churches  that  had  been  blessed  by 
other  than  her  bishops,  and  the  reordination  of  those 
admitted  to  orders  by  their  hands. 

Equally  great  in  its  results  was  the  conquest  by 
Christianity  of  unkempt  Teutondom  beyond  the 
Ehine.  Here  again  the  first  pioneers  were  Irish 
monks.  Through  her  disordered  and  immoral  con- 
dition the  Gallic  Church  had  done  nothing  for  the 
conversion  of  her  neighbour.  This  was  left,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  to  the  labours  of  the  saintly 
Columban  and  Gall.  But  more  lasting  and  impor- 
tant was  the  mission  work  of  the  English.  No  sooner 
had  they  received  the  Gospel  themselves  than  they 
hastened  to  spread  its  knowledge  in  their  native 
German  forests.  ''Thus,"  in  the  enthusiastic  words 
of  Montalembert,  "the  Christianity  of  half  the  world 
has  flowed,  or  will  flow,  from  the  fountain  which  first 
burst  forth  on  English  soil."  The  first  of  these 
apostles  was  Willibrord  (+741),  who  by  forty  years 
of  devotion  assisted  politically  by  the  enterprises  of 
Pippin  of  Heristal,  the  father  of  Charles  Martel,  won 
for  the  Church  the  Frisians  round  Utrecht,  where  he 
founded  his  see  (736).  Greater  than  he  was  a  Devon- 
shire man,  Wiofrith,  the  apostle  of  Thuringia,  better 
known  under  his  name  of  Boniface.  Born,  probably, 
at  Crediton  (680)  of  wealthy  parents,  and  famous  for 


OF  THE  CHURCH  77 

his  learning,  he  lived  until  middle  life  in  the  Bene- 
dictine abbey  of  Nutsall,  or  Nursling,  near  Win- 
chester. While  engaged  in  teaching,  there  came  to 
him  the  call  to  carry  the  Gospel  to  the  land  of  his 
forbears.  He  went  first  to  Frisia  and  worked  with 
Willibrord,  but  was  already  planning  a  larger  task. 
After  his  first  fruitless  effort  to  carry  the  Gospel  to 
Germany  he  made  his  way  to  Rome  to  seek  aid  from 
Pope  Gregory  II.  Armed  with  the  Papal  commis- 
sion, and  promising  obedience  to  the  Eoman  See,  he 
then  returned  to  his  task  (722).  For  five-and-thirty 
years  we  see  him  in  labours  more  abundant  and 
journey iugs  oft,  now  hewing  down  the  sacred  oak  at 
Geismar  amid  the  terror  of  the  heathen ;  now 
struggling  with  the  opposition  of  the  Irish  mission- 
aries in  Thuringia  ;  preaching,  baptizing,  founding 
schools  and  monasteries,  chief  of  which  was  the 
famous  Fulda  (744),  and  dividing  into  bishoprics  his 
vast  territory  from  the  Rhine  to  the  Elbe.  In  all 
this  he  was  zealously  aided  by  his  Euglish  com- 
panions, while  Euglish  ladies  not  a  few  crossed  the 
Channel  that  they  might  share  in  the  perils  and  joy 
of  his  missionary  labours.  Such  was  his  success  that 
in  one  year  he  is  said,  with  characteristic  mediaeval 
exaggeration,  to  have  baptized  one  hundred  thou- 
sand converts.  In  738  he  was  sent  by  Pope  Greg- 
ory III  to  Bavaria,  to  bring  that  disorganized 
Church  'Mnto  harmony  with  the  traditions  of  the 
Eoman  See.'^  , 

His  work  in  Germany  for  the  time  being  ac- 
complished. Pope  Zacharias  in  744  appointed  Boni- 
face his  vicar  to  take  in  hand  the  reform  of  the 
Church  in   Gaul.     The  condition  of  that   Church, 


78    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

which  had  hitherto  maintained  a  certain  independ- 
ence of  Eome,  was  deplorable.  We  have  already 
noted  the  conversion  of  the  Franks  to  the  orthodox 
faith,  under  the  lead  of  Clovis,  and  have  marked  the 
extraordinary  political  and  ecclesiastical  results  of 
this  baptism.  Henceforth  the  Franks  were  nominally 
Christiana,  defenders  of  the  orthodox  faith  ;  in  reality 
they  were  still  heathen,  no  longer  bound  by  the 
taboos  and  restraints  of  the  heathenism  they  had  dis- 
carded, and  as  yet  uninfluenced  by  the  ethics  of 
Christianity.  Painful  centuries  must  necessarily 
elapse  before  Christianity  could  more  than  touch  the 
surface  of  the  lives  of  the  many,  or  uproot  the  customs 
and  superstitions  of  heathenism.  Only  slowly  can  a 
nation  be  cleansed  of  its  devils ;  they  may  be  driven 
out  with  lash,  but  if  the  place  be  left  empty  they  will 
return  again,  with  new  spirits,  to  their  old  habitation. 
The  period  of  consolidation  that  follows  all  mission- 
ary enterprise  is  necessarily  prolonged  and  painful. 
A  later  generation  tends  to  forget  the  pit  from  which 
it  was  drawn,  and  the  toil  with  which  the  task  was 
accomplished. 

In  five  great  councils  at  which  he  presided  Boniface 
with  the  assistance  of  Pippin  and  Carloman  dealt 
firmly  with  these  evils.  At  the  same  time  he  ex- 
acted from  all  **  unity  and  obedience  to  Eome."  He 
thus  ruled  the  Church  on  both  sides  of  the  Ehine  ;  in 
Germany  as  metropolitan  of  Mainz,  in  France  as  the 
vicar  of  the  Pope.  In  his  seventy -fourth  year  Boni- 
face abdicated  his  office.  By  a  singular  privilege 
granted  to  him  by  Pope  Zacharias,  he  was  allowed 
to  choose  his  successor.  He  appointed  Lull  us,  an 
Englishman  from  Malmesbury  (753).     Freed  now 


OF  THE   CHURCH  79 

from  official  cares,  he  determined  to  devote  the  rem- 
nant of  liis  days  to  the  humble  labours  of  a  mission- 
ary, the  perils  of  which  he  deemed  nobler  than  the 
honours  of  his  crosier.  Murdered  by  the  pagans  of 
Friesland  (June  5,  755),  he  thus  obtained  the  fitting 
crown  of  his  devoted  service.  The  work  begun  by 
Boniface  was  completed  by  that  great  statesman,  law- 
giver, and  conqueror,  Charles  the  Great.  With  his 
sword  he  compelled  the  heathen  Saxons  to  accept  his 
rule  and  Christianity,  while  his  genius  for  organiza- 
tion reduced  realm  and  Church  alike  to  order.  Thus 
were  the  lands  of  Luther,  Grotius,  and  Melancthou 
won  for  the  Gospel.  For  the  time  being,  also,  in 
spite  of  the  independence  of  Charles  the  Great,  they 
were  won  for  Kome.  There  is  exaggeration  in  the 
statement  that  with  Boniface  "  began  the  conquest  of 
the  episcopate  by  the  Papacy,"  but,  like  other  ex- 
aggerations, it  witnesses  to  a  truth.  Boniface  was 
the  first  missionary  bishop  in  the  realm  of  the  Franks 
to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  Eome.  One  result 
of  his  work  was  to  hand  over  the  organization  and 
control  of  the  new  German  Church  to  the  Papacy. 
It  was  through  Boniface  that,  as  Dollinger  confesses, 
"the  German  Church  excelled  not  only  the  French 
but  all  other  Churches  in  submissiveness  to  Eome. 
At  the  Synod  of  Tribur  (895)  the  German  bishops 
declared  '  The  Roman  Church  is  our  master  in  church 
discipline  ;  therefore  let  us  patiently  endure  the  yoke 
laid  upon  us,  although  it  be  scarcely  tolerable.'  '' 
What  the  legions  of  Varus  had  failed  to  do  was 
more  than  accomplished  by  the  spiritual  soldiers  of 
the  new  Empire. 


8o    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

IV 

We  have  referred  to  the  devastations  of  the 
Vikings.  Bishop  Wordsworth  has  pointed  out  that 
the  ravages  and  rapines  of  the  Vikings  were  largely 
*'  the  sure  punishment  "  of  the  early  neglect  of  Scan- 
dinavia by  its  Christian  neighbours,  especially  the 
Franks,  Angles  and  Irish.  ^  Just  as  the  neglect  of 
Arabia  by  the  Eastern  Church  permitted  the  up- 
growth of  the  power  of  Islam,  so  the  neglect  of  Chris- 
tian duty  and  opportunity  in  Scandinavia  led  to  the 
sufferings  and  destructions  of  the  eighth  and  ninth 
centuries,  when  the  Northmen  swept  all  before  them. 
Be  this  as  it  may  this  much  is  certain,  that  the  terror 
of  the  Northmen  did  not  cease  until  the  aggression  of 
the  Vikings  had  been  met  by*the  counter  aggression 
of  the  Church.  Intrepid  missionaries,  with  their 
lives  in  their  hands,  sought  out  the  Arabs  of  the  sea 
amid  their  own  forests  and  fiords.  The  noblest  of 
these  was  Anskar,  well  named  the  ^'Apostle  of  the 
North."  Born  (801)  not  far  from  the  great  mon- 
astery of  Corbie  near  Amiens  he  grew  up  within  its 
walls  until  transferred,  about  825,  to  the  northern 
colony  of  that  house,  called  in  consequence  Coibey 
or  Corvey,  in  Westphalia.  His  life  was  devoted  to 
study  and  prayer.  For  him  the  heavens  were  ever 
open.  One  day,  he  tells  us,  he  beheld  the  ranks  of  the 
angelic  host,  while  from  the  midst  of  immeasurable 
light  there  came  a  voice,  *'  Go  and  return  to  me  again 
crowned  with  martyrdom."  The  opportunity  came 
when  in  826  a  Danish  prince,  Harald  Klak,  desiring 

*J.  Wordsworth,  "National  Church  of  Sweden"  (London, 
1911),  p.  30. 


OF  THE  CHURCH  8l 

alliance  with  the  emperor,  Lewis  the  Pious,  was  bap- 
tized with  his  wife  at  Maiuz.  On  Harald's  return  to 
Denmark  he  requested  Anskar  to  accompany  him. 
So  with  a  single  companion  Anskar  set  off  for 
Schleswig,  ransomed  a  band  of  native  youths  out  of 
slavery,  and  established  a  school.  The  school  was  a 
failure,  and  Anskar  retired  to  a  little  port  near 
Utrecht  (Wyk  te  Duerstede)  which  carried  on  a  large 
trade  with  Scandinavia.  In  829  he  crossed  over  to 
Sweden,  where  Christian  slaves,  carried  off  by  the 
pirates,  had  spread  some  knowledge  of  the  truth. 
After  a  perilous  journey  he  arrived  at  Birka  (Bjorko), 
not  far  from  Sigtuna  (Upsala),  the  chief  seat  of  the 
heathenism  of  the  country,  Anskar' s  real  objective. 
Two  years  later  (831)  he  returned  to  the  Frankish 
court  in  order  to  report  his  progress  to  the  emperor. 
Manifestly  the  opportunity  had  arisen  for  the  carry- 
ing out  of  the  old  scheme  of  Charles  the  Great  for  the 
establishment  of  the  Church  in  Northern  Germany 
and  in  the  regions  beyond.  So  Anskar  was  conse- 
crated the  first  archbishop  of  Hamburg,  the  place 
which  had  been  selected  as  a  convenient  centre  for 
the  new  missions.  The  next  year  he  betook  himself 
to  Eome,  promised  allegiance  to  Gregory  IV,  received 
the  pallium  and  ecclesiastical  authority  over  the  na- 
tions of  the  North. 

Anskar  returned  to  his  work  to  find  that  the  pirates 
had  ravaged  his  see  and  burnt  Hamburg,  while  his 
missionaries  in  Sweden  had  been  expelled  by  the 
heathen  (837).  *'The  Lord  gave,  the  Lord  hath 
taken  away,  blessed  be  the  name  of  the  Lord  : "  so 
saying  the  intrepid  monk  set  to  work  to  build  up 
once  more  his  annihilated  labours.    *  *  Be  assured, "  he 


82    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

said  to  his  heart-broken  companions,  ^*  that  what  we 
have  undertaken  to  do  among  these  nations  will  not 
be  lost,  but  will  thrive  more  and  more,  until  the 
name  of  the  Lord  extends  to  the  uttermost  bounds  of 
the  earth."  Such  faith  deserved  success.  But  seven 
years  of  further  toil  carried  on  by  Gautbert,  the  first 
Swedish  bishop,  and  a  hermit  called  Ardgar,  failed 
to  gain  the  ear  of  the  Swedes,  though  in  Jutland  the 
hostility  of  King  Horic  was  disarmed.  With  in- 
creased funds,  obtained  by  annexing  the  older  see  of 
Bremen  (847),  aided  also  by  a  timely  nomination  as 
imperial  ambassador  (legatio),  he  set  off  (848)  for  the 
court  of  King  Olaf  of  Sweden.  He  arrived  at  a  crit- 
ical moment ;  tales  were  rife  of  the  power  of  the  ^'  white 
Christ  ^' ;  a  growing  scepticism  was  preparing  the  way 
for  the  overthrow  of  polytheism.  So  Olaf  and  his 
nobles  determined  that  the  toleration  of  the  new  faith 
should  be  allowed  if  confirmed  by  an  appeal  to  the 
heathen  gods.  Lots  were  cast  in  the  open  air,  after  a 
ritual  similar  to  that  described  by  Tacitus.  A  bowl 
of  blood  with  twigs  in  it  was  taken  from  the  temple 
table,  and  the  twigs  invoked  for  the  answer.  Provi- 
dence watched  over  this  curious  transaction,  and, 
henceforth,  in  Sweden,  after  the  further  consent  of 
the  people  had  been  obtained  from  an  assembly  in 
TJpsala,  there  was  an  open  door  for  the  preaching  of 
the  Gospel.  Before  he  died,  Anskar  saw  the  triumph 
of  the  Cross,  not  the  less  sure  because  it  was  slow. 
On  3d  February,  865,  this  intrepid  warrior  of  God 
passed  to  his  reward.  Disappointed  in  hisloug  hope 
of  dying  a  martyr,  he  welcomed  as  some  compensa- 
tion his  severe  bodily  pains.  *'Have  we  not,"  he 
said,   **  received  good  from  the  hands  of  the  Lord, 


OF  THE  CHURCH  83 

and  shall  we  not  receive  evil  ? "  He  prayed  much 
^*  for  this  one  miracle,  that  out  of  him,  by  His  grace, 
God  would  make  a  good  man."  His  last  words,  re- 
peated as  long  as  he  could  speak,  were  these :  *'  Lord, 
be  merciful  to  me  the  sinner." 

Anskar's  last  letter  was  a  touching  appeal  to  the 
German  bishops  not  to  slacken  in  their  missionary 
labours.  But  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  his  successor 
and  biographer  Rimbert  no  progress  was  made  in 
Sweden  j  while  in  Denmark  the  good  work  was  al- 
most destroyed  by  the  violent  reaction  under  Sweyn 
Fork  beard.  In  early  life  Sweyn  had  been  baptized, 
along  with  his  father  Harald  Blaatand,  King  of  Den- 
mark, as  part  of  the  conditions  of  peace  dictated  by 
the  emperor  Otho  (965).  But  the  influence  of  the 
great  pirate  settlement  of  Jombburg,  where  he  was 
educated,  proved  too  strong,  and  Sweyn  relapsed  into 
heathenism.  He  made  war  on  his  father,  drove  out 
the  priests,  and  destroyed  the  churches.  On  the  3d 
February,  1014,  the  conqueror  died  at  Gainsborough, 
after  a  campaign  in  which  he  had  ravaged  England, 
burning  the  churches,  and  violating  the  women.  In 
his  last  hours  he  is  said  to  have  beheld  the  martyred 
king,  Edmund  of  Bury,  advancing  towards  him  in 
full  armour.  Sweyn  shouted  for  help,  but  the  saint 
pierced  him  with  his  spear.  Which  things  are  an 
allegory  ;  for  his  son,  the  great  Cuut  (1014-1035), 
with  zeal  stimulated  by  the  crimes  of  his  father, 
never  rested  until  Denmark  as  a  nation  was  won  for 
Christ,  largely  by  the  help  of  missionaries  whom,  as 
Adam  of  Bremen  tells  us,  ''he  brought  from  Eng- 
land." By  his  pilgrimage  to  Rome  in  1027,  Cnut, 
who  had  hitherto  been  looked  upon  by  Christendom 


84    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

at  large  as  a  heathen,  brought  his  northern  realms 
into  union  with  Latin  Christendom  ;  while  his  treaties 
with  the  masters  of  the  Alpine  passes  secured  safety 
for  English  and  Danish  pilgrims  to  the  papal  city. 
In  spite  of  the  cruelty  and  craftiness  of  his  character, 
Cnut  had  done  much,  both  by  the  temper  of  his  laws 
and  by  his  benefactions,  to  increase  throughout  his 
domains  the  influence  of  the  Church.  At  the  same 
time  Olaf  Skotronung,  the  first  Christian  king  of 
Sweden  (993-1021),  busied  himself  with  the  con- 
version of  his  subjects,  he  also  making  much  use 
for  the  purpose  of  English  missionaries. 

From  England,  also,  had  the  Gospel  first  penetrated 
into  Norway.  Its  introduction  arose  from  the  educa- 
tion at  the  court  of  Athelstan  in  England  of  Haakon 
the  Good,  the  youngest  son  of  Harald  Fairhair.  On 
his  succession  to  the  throne  (934-961)  Haakon  quietly 
attempted  to  introduce  Christianity  into  his  country, 
but  was  compelled  by  public  opinion  to  take  part  in 
heathen  sacrifices.  The  attempt  was  renewed  during 
the  short  reign  of  Olaf  Tryggvason  (995-1000),  the 
hero  of  the  Sagas,  who,  while  travelling  in  Germany, 
had  been  baptized  by  a  priest  of  Bremen.  After  his 
defeat  of  the  English  at  Maldon  Olaf  and  Sweyn  had 
attacked  London  together  (8th  September,  994),  but 
had  been  driven  off  by  the  stout  defense  of  its  citi- 
zens. Peace  was  made  with  Ethelred,  and  Olaf  was 
confirmed  at  Andover  (994)  by  ^If  heah,  later  known 
because  of  his  martyrdom  as  St.  Alphege  of  Canter- 
bury. After  his  confirmation  Olaf  promised  that  he 
would  never  attack  England  again  ;  and  on  his  re- 
turn to  Norway  he  tried  hard  to  introduce  Christian- 
ity, taking  with  him  the  priest  of  Bremen  who  had 


OF  THE  CHURCH  85 

first  turned  his  thoughts  to  the  Gospel.  Olaf  s  defeat 
and  death,  when  attacked  by  Sweyn,  put  an  end  to 
his  plans.  The  forces  of  evil  were  too  strong.  After 
years  of  struggle,  in  which  violence  was  the  common 
refuge  of  both  sides,  little  real  good  had  been  accom- 
plished. At  length  Olaf  the  Holy  (1017-1033)  broke 
the  foreign  yoke  of  his  country,  hitherto  the  chief 
obstacle  to  the  spread  of  the  religion  of  its  masters, 
demolished  every  stronghold  of  the  pagans,  and 
effected  their  conversion  either  by  violence  or  by 
his  English  missionaries  and  their  schools.  Olafs 
foundation  of  the  mother  church  of  Trondjhem  was 
followed  later  by  the  organization  of  the  country  into 
sees,  still  nominally  subject  to  the  archbishop  of 
Hamburg- Bremen.  But  only  slowly  during  the  next 
three  centuries  did  this  wild  country  soften  down 
into  Christianity  ;  for  its  persuasion  was  rather  of 
the  sword  than  the  Spirit.  In  Scandinavia  "con- 
version demanded  an  extremely  difficult  change  in 
life  and  habits,  even  when  it  did  not  penetrate  very 
deeply  into  the  character,  especially  among  the  men. 
A  man  had  to  give  up  the  Yiking  life.  He  was  for- 
bidden to  follow  the  old  law  of  private  vengeance, 
and  to  have  more  than  one  wife.  The  Church's 
rules  as  to  marriage  with  near  relations  and  others, 
as  to  penance,  fasting,  observance  of  holy  days  and 
Sundays,  and  in  particular  the  prohibition  to  eat 
horse  flesh,  were  all  burdensome. '*  But  the  chief 
difficulty  lay  in  the  fact  that  "  hitherto  the  laws  had 
been  of  the  people's  own  making.  Now  they  had, 
in  part  at  least,  to  be  accepted  from  outside."  * 
Nothing  is  so  remarkable  in  the  history  of  the 
^  Wordsworth,  op.  cit.,  p.  86. 


86    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

Church  as  the  way  in  which  new  converts  at  once 
seek  to  win  others  to  the  faith.  The  struggle  in 
Norway  was  still  in  the  balance  when,  in  996,  Olaf 
Tryggvason  sent  the  Gospel  to  Iceland.  Within 
three  years  an  Icelandic  convert — Leif — set  off  as 
an  apostle  to  Greenland.  In  the  twelfth  century 
the  kiug  of  the  Sveas,  or  Upper  Sweden,  afterwards 
honoured  as  St.  Eric,  was  doing  his  best  to  Chris- 
tianize Finland,  by  means  of  a  missionary  crusade 
conducted,  however,  with  more  humanity  than  the 
majority  of  such  expeditions.  Eric  left  behind  him 
as  bishop  in  Finland  an  Englishman  called  Henry 
who  had  come  with  Nicholas  Breakspear — whom  you 
will  remember  as  the  only  Englishman  who  ever  be- 
came a  pope  (Hadrian  IV) — to  the  Swedish  council 
of  Linkoping.  Some  years  later  Henry  perished  as  a 
martyr.  Thus  were  the  glad  tidings  carried  from 
one  country  to  another,  and  the  wild  men  of  the 
North  brought  within  the  fold  of  the  Church.  In 
Scandinavia,  by  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century, 
the  public  worship  of  Woden  was  dead,  the  cross 
everywhere  triumphant. 

V 

Among  the  Slavs  also  the  Gospel  proved  the  power 
of  God  unto  salvation.  In  Moravia  the  work  was 
begun  by  two  remarkable  Greeks,  natives  of  Salonika, 
a  Greek  town  entirely  surrounded  by  Slav  people, 
Cyril,  whose  original  name  was  Constantine  (b.  827), 
and  Methodius.  They  were  both  men  of  consider- 
able experience.  Cyril  had  been  sent  in  859  to 
labour  among  the  pagan  Chazars  of  the  Crimea. 
There  he  discovered  and  brought  back  to  Eome  (861) 


OF  THE  CHURCH  87 

the  remains  of  the  martyr  pope  Clement  I,  while 
Methodius  had  taken  some  part  in  the  conversion 
of  the  Bulgarians  (860).  In  his  work  among  this 
Turanian  people — next  to  the  Huns  the  most  hated 
of  the  Asiatic  invaders  of  Europe— he  had  used  a 
method  to  reach  their  couscieuces  not  singular  to  his 
age.  By  his  skill  as  a  painter  he  represented  the 
Last  Judgment  with  such  horror  of  the  damned  that 
Bogoris  the  king  was  literally  frightened  into  bap- 
tism. In  863,  Methodius  and  Cyril  arrived  in 
Moravia,  whose  king,  Eastislav,  had  quarrelled 
with  Eome,  and  leaned  towards  connecting  his 
Church  with  that  of  the  East,  more,  perhaps,  be- 
cause he  would  thereby  cut  himself  off  from  German 
dependency  than  because  of  any  theological  prepos- 
sessions. But  owing  to  the  envoy  of  the  metro- 
politan of  Constantinople,  Photius,  Cyril  accepted 
the  invitation  of  Nicholas  I  and  set  off  to  Eome  to 
seek  recognition  (867).  There  he  died  February  16, 
869,  and  lies  buried  in  the  Church  of  St.  Clement, 
in  whose  wonderful  lower  church  is  a  fresco  of  his 
funeral  with  Nicholas  I,  who  had  died  two  years 
earlier,  walking  in  the  procession !  Meanwhile 
Methodius  (+885)  returned  to  his  labours  in  Pan- 
nonia  and  Moravia.  The  first  labour  of  Cyril  had 
been  to  invent  an  alphabet  known  as  glagolitic  for 
the  yet  unwritten  Slavonic,  and  then  render  into  the 
Slavonian  tongue  the  New  Testament  and  the  Psalter. 
Half  a  century  later  it  was  superseded  by  the  so-called 
Cyrillic  alphabet,  really  invented  by  St.  Clement  of 
Drenoviza,  on  the  basis  of  the  glagolitic.  A  hundred 
years  later,  on  the  conversion  of  Vladimir  (988),  this 
version  of  Cyril,  with  its  quaint  Greek  letters,  was 


88    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

at  once  adopted  by  the  Greek  teachers  of  Eussia  as 
the  national  Scriptures.  But  though  Methodius  had 
thus  put  himself  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Latins, 
he  used  to  the  end  of  his  life  the  creed  and  ritual  of 
the  Greeks,  nor  would  he  abandon  the  reading  of 
the  Scriptures  in  the  vernacular  in  spite  of  the  op- 
position of  the  German  bishops.  John  VIII,  who 
had  at  first  forbidden  the  service  of  God  in  a  bar- 
barous tongue,  was  convinced  by  his  argument  from 
the  Psalms  that  God  had  made  other  languages  than 
Hebrew,  Greek,  and  Latin.  He  was  possibly  more 
influenced  by  the  dread  that  the  Moravians  should 
attach  themselves  to  Constantinople.  A  compromise 
was  passed — in  the  mass  the  Gospel  and  Epistle  were 
first  read  in  Latin,  and  then  translated  into  the  lan- 
guage of  the  people. 

The  last  years  of  Methodius  were  embittered  by  the 
attacks  of  his  German  fellow  workers,  who  desired  to 
reduce  the  Moravians  into  dependence  on  the  see  of 
Passau.  Twice  they  branded  Methodius  as  a  heretic, 
and  drove  him  to  vindicate  his  faith  and  authority  at 
the  Lateran.  As  a  result  the  church  in  Moravia  was 
linked  with  the  Bohemian.  Its  fate,  however,  was  to 
be  linked  with  Bohemia.  There  also  the  first  seeds 
of  the  truth  had  been  scattered  in  871  by  the  active 
Methodius.  The  ensuing  struggle  with  heathenism 
was  long  and  severe,  and  was  intensified  by  the  Hun 
invasion  of  908  which  destroyed  the  Slavonic  power 
and  left  German  influences  supreme.  In  936  the 
saintly  King  Wenzel  was  murdered.  During  the 
eight  years  of  his  reign  he  had  founded  churches  in 
every  city  of  his  realm,  and  shown  forth  a  religion 
pure  and  undefiled,  by  visiting  the  fatherless  and 


OF  THE  CHURCH  89 

widow  in  their  affliction,  redeeming  the  slave,  and 
clothing  the  poor.  His  brother,  Boleslav  the  Cruel, 
was  at  the  head  of  the  heathen  conspirators,  one  of 
whose  objects  was  to  tear  Bohemia  away  from  depend- 
ence on  the  Empire.  * '  God  forgive  thee,  my  brother, " 
cried  Wenzel,  as  they  cut  him  down.  But  the  years 
of  heathen  reaction  could  not  stamp  out  the  work 
which  he  had  accomplished.  Three  years  later  Bole- 
slav tried  to  atone  for  his  murder  by  enshrining  the 
bones  of  Wenzel  at  Prague.  With  Boleslav  the  Pious 
(967-999)  there  was  the  dawn  of  brighter  days.  The 
Bohemian  Church  was  organized  in  the  Latin  form 
(983)  under  the  learned  Adalbert,  the  first  bishop  of 
Prague.  His  zeal  against  polygamy  and  the  slave- 
trade  stirred  up  the  wrath  of  the  heathen  j  while 
within  the  Church  his  Germanizing  spirit,  which  had 
forbidden  the  Slavonic  ritual,  imported  from  Moravia, 
and  substituted  the  Roman,  led  both  parties  to  unite 
in  his  expulsion.  But  Rome  had  won  ;  and  in  1080 
Hildebrand  forbade  all  further  use  of  the  vulgar 
tongue.  A  few  years  later  the  monks  who  adhered 
to  it  were  expelled  and  their  service-books  destroyed. 
But  the  national  feeling,  so  strong  among  the  Slavs, 
one  side  of  which  is  the  age-long  hatred  of  Czech 
and  German,  could  not  be  crushed.  Three  centuries 
later,  Hus  and  Jerome  found  a  country  ripe  for  re- 
volt. But  the  motive  of  their  so-called  Reformation 
as  of  recent  Czech  revolts  against  the  Roman  Church 
was  as  much  nationalism  as  the  Gospel.  For  the 
tragedy  of  Bohemia  is  that  of  a  Slavonic  race,  sur- 
rounded by  alien  Germans,  cut  off  from  other  Slavs 
by  its  religious  dependence  upon  Rome.  How  differ- 
ent would  have  been  its  history  as  also  the  history  of 


90    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

Central  Europe  if  Methodius,  its  apostle,  had  not 
been  driven  from  the  Eastern  Church  and  subsequent 
connection  with  Russia  by  the  heresy  of  Photius  ! 

The  conversion  of  the  Poles  presents  few  features 
of  interest.  This  was  accomplished  through  the  co« 
ercion  of  its  dukes  (966).  Here  it  is  sufficient  to 
mark  that  from  the  first  it  had  a  strong  leaning  to 
Rome,  thus  emphasizing  in  years  to  come  the  breach 
between  the  Polish  and  Russian  branches  of  Slavdom. 
Under  Casimir  I  (1034-1058),  who  was  educated  at 
the  famous  French  monastery  of  Cluguy,  the  Slavonic 
ritual  was  abolished,  and  Roman  liturgies  and  cus- 
toms introduced  in  its  place.  Here  again,  as  in  the 
case  of  Bohemia,  we  witness  under  forms  of  grievous 
wrong  the  tragedy  of  religion  and  race-instincts  pull- 
ing different  ways. 

In  one  district  of  the  North  alone  was  the  hold  of 
paganism  more  lasting.  We  refer  to  the  districts  that 
now  form  the  main  centres  of  the  Prussian  Junkers. 
The  savage  Wends,  who  dwelt  between  the  Elbe  and 
the  Oder,  obstinately  refused  until  the  middle  of  the 
twelfth  century  to  forsake  their  idols.  Here  the  work 
was  hindered  for  a  reason,  common  elsewhere,  but  to 
which  as  yet  we  have  not  alluded.  In  all  the  mis- 
sions we  may  detect  the  presence  of  political  influ- 
ences, and  the  evils  of  national  strifes.  Through 
political  compulsion  nations  had  been  born  into  the 
Church  in  a  day ;  to  political  causes  also  must  be 
attributed,  especially  in  Denmark  and  Norway,  the 
strength  of  heathen  reactions.  The  King  of  Denmark 
put  his  finger  on  the  weakness  as  well  as  the  strength 
of  many  of  the  Teutonic  missionaries  when  he  said  that 
"they  were  accompanied  by  those  whose  mind  was  more 


OF  THE  CHURCH  91 

keen  on  the  gathering  of  tribute  than  the  conversion 
of  the  Gentiles."  The  Wends,  like  the  SaxoDS  in  the 
days  of  the  great  Charles,  ill  brooked  their  subjection 
to  the  Holy  Eoman  Empire.  They  looked  on  their 
missionaries  as  the  allies  of  oppression.  They  con- 
sidered that  their  ulterior  purpose  was  to  extend 
eastwards  {Drang  nach  Osten)  the  domain  of  the  marks 
or  marches — the  frontier  lauds  of  Teutoudom — Bran- 
denburg, Altmark,  Neumark,  Austria  (Ocoterreich, 
i.  €. ,  the  Eastern  realm)  and  the  like.  It  was  to  little 
purpose  that  bishoprics  and  monasteries  were  founded 
with  a  centre  at  Magdeburg  (967).  At  every  oppor- 
tunity these  were  destroyed  by  fire  and  sword. 
Equally  fruitless  were  the  efforts  at  a  later  date  of 
Gottschalk  their  king,  who  had  been  brought  up  in 
a  monastery  and  who,  for  fifteen  years,  laboured  for 
the  conversion  of  his  people.  In  1060  he  and  his 
missionaries  were  beaten  to  death  with  clubs,  and 
sacrificed  to  their  war-god  Eadegost,  Their  heads 
were  then  fixed  on  poles  in  the  temple  of  Eethre. 
Not  until  1133  did  Albert  the  Bear,  of  the  Altmark, 
who  from  1144  onwards  called  himself  Margrave  of 
Brandenburg,  beat  down  into  a  reluctant  Christianity 
these  dwellers  round  the  modern  Berlin.  Their  chief 
apostle  was  the  saintly  and  indefatigable  Vicelin 
(1125-1154).  About  the  same  time  also  Pomerania 
was  compelled  by  its  Polish  overlords,  the  Duke  of 
Poland,  to  accept  Christianity  which  on  its  spiritual 
as  distinct  from  its  political  side  was  chiefly  the  work 
of  the  gentle  Otto  of  Bamberg. 

A  further  step  in  the  conversion  of  the  Wends, 
especially  in  the  Baltic  provinces  east  of  Berlin,  was 
taken  when  in  1190  German  democracy,  under  one 


92    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

Walpot  von  Bassenlieim,  a  trader  of  Bremen,  stung 
by  the  enthusiasm  of  the  crusades,  established  a  union 
of  ship  captains  from  Liibeck  for  the  succour  of  the 
sick  and  the  dying  at  Acre  in  Palestine.  In  1199 
this  was  turned  into  the  military  order  of  the  Teutonic 
Knights.  ^'This  Walpot,"  we  read,  *'was  not  by 
birth  a  noble,  but  his  deeds  were  noble."  The  new 
order  obtained  vast  possessions  in  Germany.  In 
1227  it  united  with  the  order  of  the  Brothers  of  the 
Sword  who  had  compelled  the  Livoniaus  to  be  bap- 
tized in  a  body,  and  in  1228  commenced  a  crusade 
against  the  heathen  Prussians,  who,  since  their 
massacre  in  997  of  St.  Adalbert  of  Prague,  had 
steadily  resisted  all  attempts  at  conversion.  Hence- 
forth their  history — to  quote  the  summary  of  Carlyle 
— is  ''a  dim  nightmare  of  unintelligible  marching 
and  fighting,'^  but  the  results  at  any  rate  are  lumi- 
nous still.  In  a  fifty  years'  war  they  subdued  the 
pagans  by  the  argument  of  the  sword,  and  laid  the 
foundations  of  modern  Prussia.  We  may  note  that 
the  Gospel  and  the  Sword  went  hand  in  hand,  and  to 
this  we  owe  the  foundation  in  1201  of  the  German 
trading  city  of  Eiga,  now  the  great  Baltic  port  of 
Russia.  In  1255  Riga  was  made  the  metropolis  of  the 
Prussian  and  Livonian  Church.  This  was  followed 
in  1256  by  the  foundation  of  Konigsberg,  where  in 
later  years  the  kings  of  Prussia  should  be  crowned, 
and  in  1276  of  the  great  castle  of  Marieuburg,  hence- 
forth the  centre  of  the  Teutonic  Order.  The  modern 
history  of  Prussia,  and  of  Europe  to-day,  is  only 
rightly  appreciated  when  we  thus  grasp  the  savage 
origins  of  Prussian  Christianity,  and  the  recent  de- 
velopment of  all  her  culture. 


OF  THE  CHURCH  93 

Even  in  Eastern  Europe  the  enthusiasm  of  her  mis- 
sionaries won  for  Kome  a  province  that,  geograph- 
ically, should  have  fallen  to  the  see  of  Constantinople. 
From  the  close  of  the  ninth  century  until  Otto  the 
Great,  by  his  victory  at  Lechfeld  (955),  shut  them  up 
within  their  present  boundaries,  the  Magyars  were 
the  terror  of  Europe.  They  swept  over  the  West  like 
a  stream  of  fire,  uttering  cries  that  none  could  under- 
stand, and  massacring  the  Christians  by  thousands, 
especially  in  Bavaria,  which  suffered  frightfully  from 
their  ravages.  Their  slaves  were  countless  ;  through 
them,  also,  the  glad  tidings  was  first  carried  to  their 
masters.  The  work  thus  strangely  begun  by  the 
ravages  of  war  was  furthered  by  the  toils  of  German 
missionaries,  the  forerunner  being  a  certain  "Wolf- 
gang, a  monk  from  Einsiedeln  in  Switzerland,  cen- 
turies later  the  home  of  the  reformer  Zwingli. 
Wolfgang  was  followed  by  the  vigorous  Adalbert  of 
Prague  and  the  work  was  completed  by  Stephen, 
their  first  king  (997-1038),  who  had  married  the 
Christian  princess,  Gisela  of  Bavaria.  To  him  it  was 
given  to  found  alike  both  Church  and  State.  From 
the  first  he  drew  close  to  Eome,  from  whose  pope, 
Sylvester  II,  he  had  received  his  title  (1000).  Again 
we  note  that  the  persuasion  of  the  people  was  not  of 
the  spirit.  Every  ten  villages  were  forced  to  build 
and  endow  a  church  ;  whoever  would  not  become  a 
Christian  was  degraded  into  a  serf.  Thus  again  a 
race  of  Tartars,  whom  the  legions  of  the  Caesars  had 
never  conquered,  recognized  the  spiritual  dominion  of 
Eome,  while  hordes  of  grim  warriors,  so  long  the  ter- 
ror of  the  Church,  became  in  the  coming  centuries  the 
bulwark  of  Europe  against  the  advance  of  the  Turks. 


94    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

The  standing  reproach  cast  by  the  Latin  Church  in 
the  teeth  of  her  sister  of  the  East  is  her  barrenness  j 
that  Constantinople  and  its  dependencies  can  show  no 
missionary  operations  comparable  to  those  we  have 
already  examined,  and  others  that  in  every  age  have 
emanated  from  Eome  and  its  subject  Churches.  The 
reproach  is  true,  though  its  cause  lies  deep  in  the  mys- 
teries of  human  nature  itself.  The  Eastern  Church, 
like  the  brooding  East,  has  ever  been  stationary  and 
immutable.  Though  it  would  be  flattery  to  say  that 
it  has  "plunged  in  thought  again,"  nevertheless  its 
title  of  Orthodox  reveals  its  ideal ;  on  the  other  hand 
the  Western  Church,  like  the  West,  is  aggressive, 
flexible,  and  comprehensive  or  Catholic.  It  is 
characteristic  of  the  East  that  for  centuries,  in  the 
Church  of  Alexandria,  the  dead  hand  of  its  first 
bishop  St.  Mark  was  employed  as  the  instrument  of 
consecration.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  West  that 
the  Latin  Church,  entering  on  her  career  amid  the 
crash  of  a  falling  empire  and  the  wild  chaos  of 
barbarian  hordes,  should  realize  that  for  her  the 
method  of  salvation  lay  in  a  constant  aggression, 
controlled  and  organized  by  a  new  imperialism,  or 
rather  the  old  imperialism  under  a  more  spiritual 
form. 

One  great  difference  between  the  Eastern  and 
Western  Churches  should  be  noted.  In  the  East 
there  is  no  period  that  can  be  called  Mediaeval.  For 
centuries,  until  the  fall  of  Constantinople,  the  Eastern 
Church  was  Greek  in  name  and  character,  conserving 
the  old  spirit,  usages  and  rites  almost  without  change. 
Nothing  in  fact  in  history  is  more  remarkable  than 
the  vitality  of  the  Eastern  portion  of  the  Eoman 


OF  THE  CHURCH  95 

Empire,  its  repeated  emergence  after  defeat  and 
disaster,  and  the  unchanging  civilization  which  so 
long  centred  itself  in  Constantinople.  No  doubt  the 
Eastern  Church  had  its  struggles  and  difficulties,  but 
they  were  wholly  different  from  those  of  the  West. 
In  the  West  it  was  the  struggle  of  assimilation  of 
discordant  elements — much  the  same  problem  in  the 
spiritual  sphere  as  that  of  America  to-day  in  the 
political.  In  the  East  it  was  the  repulse  of  an  alien 
religion.  The  work  of  the  Greeks  in  the  salvation 
of  Europe  has  been  well  described  by  the  great  states- 
man William  Gladstone  who  through  life  loved  their 
nation  and  pleaded  their  cause  : 

"  It  was  those  nations  who  broke  the  force  of  the 
advancing  deluge,  and  left  of  the  deluge  only  so  much 
as  the  rest  of  Europe  was  able  to  repel.  They  were 
like  a  shelving  beach  which  restrained  the  ocean. 
That  beach,  it  is  true,  is  beaten  by  the  waves,  it  is 
laid  desolate,  it  produces  nothing ;  it  becomes  noth- 
ing, perhaps,  but  a  mass  of  shingle,  of  rock,  of  almost 
useless  seaweed  ;  but  it  is  a  fence  behind  which  the 
cultivated  earth  can  spread,  and  escape  the  incoming 
tide  ;  and  so  it  was  against  the  Turk — the  resistance 
of  Bulgarians,  of  Servians,  of  Greeks,  a  resistance  in 
which  one  by  one  they  succumbed," 

The  student  even  of  liberal  culture  fails  to  realize 
the  tremendous  debt  which  the  common  Christianity 
of  Europe  owes  to  this  resistance  of  the  Eastern 
Church  to  the  Islam  conquerors.  Had  Constanti- 
nople fallen  to  the  Turks  four  centuries  earlier  than 
it  did  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  Christianity  of  the 
West  could  have  been  saved  from  the  fate  which 
overwhelmed  the  East.    To  this  resistance  also  we 


96    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

owe  that  unchangeableness  in  the  Eastern  Church 
which  has  saved  it  from  all  the  follies  and  also  all  the 
glories  of  medisevalism.  For  the  problems  of  resist- 
ance and  assimilation  are  utterly  different.  The  one 
demands  conservation  and  conservatism,  the  other 
constant  growth.  We  may  reproach  the  Eastern 
Church  for  its  unprogressive  character  ;  but  if  so  our 
reproach  should  be  with  understanding  of  the  great 
part  which  '^uuprogressiveness^' often  plays  in  the 
development  of  civilization. 

To  this  fact  of  the  different  problems  that  the  East- 
ern and  Western  Churches  had  to  solve  we  may  also 
trace  the  tremendous  catastrophe  of  their  separation. 
To-day  these  sister  churches  stand  aloof 

Like  cliffs,  which  had  been  rent  asunder 
A  dreary  sea  now  flows  between. 

The  shallow  historian  is  accustomed  to  sneer  at  the 
causes  of  their  separation,  to  speak  of  the  addition 
of  a  word  in  a  creed  (fllioque)  and  the  like.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  separation,  though  its  ostensible 
causes  were  trivial,  was  almost  inevitable,  and  was 
the  direct  result  of  the  different  experiences  through 
which  each  had  passed.  No  church  which  had 
passed  through  the  tremendous  crises,  which  to-day 
we  sum  up  in  the  phrase  the  Middle  Ages,  but  would 
fail  to  understand  the  special  characteristics  which 
the  age-long  resistance  of  Constantinople  to  Islam,  as 
well  as  her  Greek  origins,  was  impressing  upon  her. 
In  the  West,  by  her  necessary  development,  the 
Church  was  led  to  claim  a  position  of  equality  with, 
if  not  superiority  to,  the  State.     In  the  East,  on  the 


OF  THE  CHURCH  97 

contrary,  from  causes  just  as  political  aud  inevitable 
as  those  in  the  West,  the  whole  drift  was  towards  an 
identification  of  Church  and  State  that  was  in  due 
time  to  pass  into  subordination.  In  the  West  the 
conception  of  nationalism  has  slowly  shed  the  con- 
ception of  inevitable  uniformity  of  creed  and  religion  ; 
nationalism  is  a  matter  of  race,  boundaries,  or  polit- 
ical associations.  In  the  East  from  time  immemorial 
nationalism  and  religion  have  ever  been  one,  i.  e.,  in 
ultimate  issues  political  events  are  determined  not  by 
national  boundaries  or  race  affinities  but  by  common 
religious  instincts.  As  we  see  in  India  to-day  where 
there  is  no  common  religion  there  can  be  no  common 
nation.  On  the  other  hand  Islam  binds  together 
Albanian,  Turk,  Arab  and  Afghan. 

In  the  one  great  addition  to  the  Greek  Church,  the 
conversion  of  the  Eussians,  we  see  almost  completely 
this  identification  of  nationalism  and  religion.  Eussia 
is  the  only  country  of  Europe  Christianized  by  the 
sole  command  of  its  prince,  though  not  without  some 
previous  efforts  on  the  part  of  Greek  missionaries. 
In  place  of  Augustine  of  England,  Patrick  of  Ireland, 
and  Boniface  of  Germany,  we  have  its  Tsar  ;  Vladimir 
Isapostolos,  ''Vladimir  equal  to  an  apostle,"  Vladi- 
mir, the  prince  of  Kiev  and  Novgorod,  of  the  Norse 
house  of  Eurik,  who  through  the  influence  of  his 
mother  Olga  determined  not  only  to  adopt  Christian- 
ity himself,  but  to  make  it  the  State  religion  for  his 
people  (988).  An  elaborate  tale  is  told  of  the 
reasons  which  led  to  his  choice  of  the  Greek  Churcb. 
Vladimir  in  making  his  decision  may  have  been  im- 
pressed by  the  gorgeous  ceremonies  of  Santa  Sophia  ; 
he  was  probably  more  convinced  by  the  complete 


98    DAWNING  OF  MISSIONARY  CONSCIOUSNESS 

identification  of  Church  and  State.  So  he  issued  his 
decree  that  all  Kiev  should  flock  to  the  Dnieper  to 
receive  baptism,  ^'and  whosoever  on  the  morrow 
should  not  repair  to  the  river,  whether  rich  or  poor, 
he  would  hold  him  for  an  enemy !  '^  In  the  West 
the  Pope  rose  to  imperial  supremacy  because  men 
turned  in  despair  from  a  world  of  warring  kings  and 
princelets  to  the  one  independent  power  that  stood 
for  righteousness.  In  Russia  where  men  faced  for 
centuries  the  overwhelming  peril  of  the  Tartar 
hordes,  everything  depended  upon  the  strength  of 
the  Crown  ;  thus  autocracy  after  a  brief  trial  of  na- 
tional patriarchs  with  the  rights  of  the  former 
patriarchs  of  Constantinople  strictly  subordinated 
the  spiritual  power  to  the  secular,  or  rather,  invested 
both  in  one  supreme  head,  the  Tsar.  Any  other 
course  would  have  led  to  the  destruction  of  the  na- 
tion in  her  fight  with  her  enemies.  If  Eussia  had 
come  under  the  sway  of  Rome,  it  is  possible  that  she 
would  have  passed  through  a  similar  historical  evo- 
lution to  the  Tartar  Hungarians  or  the  Slavs  of 
Bohemia  and  Moravia.  Possibly  the  political  re- 
sults might  also  have  been  similar ;  the  Empire  of 
Russia  might  never  have  emerged  from  her  Tartar 
dependence.  But  here  we  verge  upon  speculations 
which  would  carry  us  far  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
mediaeval  Church  and  its  great  missionary  efforts. 

We  must  bring  this  hurried  survey  to  a  close.  In 
Western  Europe  the  victory  of  the  Cross  over  the 
heathen  was  complete.  But  in  the  East  the  future  of 
the  Muslim,  and  the  recovery  by  the  Church  of  the 
conquests  of  the  crescent  is  still  a  problem  of  the  fu- 
ture.    The  method  of  that  recovery  and  its  times 


OF  THE  CHURCH  99 

knoweth  no  man  ;  whether  by  some  gigantic  struggle 
of  the  eagles  over  the  carcass,  or  by  the  peaceful  and 
enlightened  methods  of  the  missionary.  But  its  cer- 
tainty is  the  comfort  of  every  believer.  In  the  words 
of  one  of  your  own  poets  we  may  say 

Truth  crushed  to  earth  shall  rise  again, 
The  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers  j 

But  Error  wounded  writhes  in  pain, 
And  dies  amid  her  worshippers. 

**  On  the  bronze  gates  of  St.  Sophia  at  Constanti- 
nople may  still  be  seen— at  least  it  might  be  seen 
some  years  ago — the  words  placed  there  by  its  Chris- 
tian builder,  and  left  there  by  the  scornful  ignorance 
or  indifference  of  the  Ottomans — I.  X.  NIKA,  Jesus 
Christ  conquers.  It  is  the  expression  of  that  un- 
shaken assurance,  which  in  the  lowest  depths  of  hu- 
miliation has  never  left  the  Christian  races  of  the 
East,  that  sooner  or  later  theirs  is  the  winning 
cause.^'^ 

*  Church,  *'  Influence  of  Christianity  Upon  National  Character." 


LECTURE  III 

THE  IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC 
FORCES    OF    THE   MIDDLE  AGES 


LECTURE  III 

THE  IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC 
FORCES  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


IN  the  last  lecture  we  dealt  with  the  task  of  the 
Church  in  reclaiming  the  heathen  for  the  Cross. 
We  surveyed  in  hurried  outline  the  great  mis- 
sionary campaigns  of  early  mediaeval  Europe.  We 
noted  the  missions  of  the  Eastern  Church,  but  saw 
that  from  the  standpoint  of  the  historian  of  the 
Middle  Ages  they  stand  really  outside  his  scheme, 
inasmuch  as  in  Eussia  and  the  East  there  is  no  period 
that  can  strictly  be  called  mediaeval.  The  Middle 
Age  of  Eussia,  its  struggle  with  the  Tartars,  came  at 
a  time  when  in  the  rest  of  Europe  the  Middle  Ages 
with  their  characteristic  development  was  dying  out. 
Hitherto  we  have  confined  our  atteution  to  the  ex- 
ternal side  of  these  heroic  enterprises.  We  have 
looked  solely  at  their  extension,  the  provinces  and 
kingdoms  won  for  the  Church.  In  our  present  lec- 
ture we  propose  to  look  at  their  intension,  to  dis- 
cover the  causes  of  the  Church's  power  as  a  civi- 
lizing factor,  then  to  pass  to  an  analysis  of  the  effects 
of  the  mission  efforts  upon  the  social  and  ethical  de- 
velopment of  the  people. 

At  the  very  outset  of  our  investigation  it  may  be 
well  to  meet  an  objection  and  point  a  conchision. 
These  wholesale  conversions,  it  may  be  urged,  were 

103 


I04     IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

but  nomiDal,  formal  and  external,  as  we  have  al- 
ready noted  in  the  case  of  the  Franks.  In  its  con- 
flict with  the  barbarians  Christianity  had  conquered  ; 
yet  at  times  it  might  seem  as  if  the  chief  result  were 
to  make  barbarism  more  superstitious,  and  cruelty 
more  ingenious.  The  new  faith  scarcely  cleansed 
the  outside  of  the  cup  and  platter  ;  within,  it  was  as 
of  old,  full  of  extortion  and  excess.  An  adversary 
might  argue  that  the  only  elements  of  Christianity 
which  the  barbarians  made  their  own  were  its  rites, 
magic,  miracles,  above  all  the  belief  in  the  super- 
natural assistance  of  its  saints.  All  this  is  true  and 
more.  Nevertheless,  it  is  one  of  those  half  truths 
which  are  more  false  than  any  lie.  Let  us  hear  in 
this  matter  the  wise  words  of  Sir  James  Stephen  ; 
"Where  is  that  country  and  what  is  that  time  in 
which  Christianity  has  been  more  than  this  amongst 
the  great  multitude  of  those  who  have  called  and  pro- 
fessed themselves  Christians  ?  The  travellers  in  the 
narrow  way,  who  are  guided  by  her  vital  spirit,  have 
ever  been  the  ^chosen  few.'  The  travellers  along  the 
broad  way,  wearing  her  exterior  and  visible  badges, 
have  ever  been  the  '  many  called.'  And  yet  he  who 
should  induce  any  heathen  people  to  adopt  the  mere 
ceremonial  of  the  Church,  to  celebrate  her  ritual,  and 
to  recognize,  though  but  in  words,  the  authority  of 
her  Divine  Head,  would  confer  on  them  a  blessing 
exceeding  all  which  mere  human  philanthropy  has 
ever  accomplished  or  designed.  For  such  is  the 
vivifying  influence  of  the  spirit  of  the  Gospel  that  it 
can  never  be  long  otherwise  than  prolific  of  the  high- 
est temporal  benefits  to  all,  and  of  the  highest  spiri- 
tual benefit  to  some  in  every  land  which  acknowledges 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  I05 

it  as  a  rule  of  life,  and  receives  it  as  a  system  of  wor- 
ship. "^ 

To  the  same  effect  also  is  the  verdict  of  a  modern 
thinker  :  *' Christianity,"  says  Eitter,  in  his  "History 
of  Christian  Philosophy,"  "  offered  itself  and  was  ac- 
cepted by  the  German  tribes  as  a  law  and  as  a  disci- 
pline, as  an  ineffable,  incomiprehensible  mystery. 
Its  fruits  were  righteousness  and  works,  and  belief 
in  the  dead  word.  But  in  a  barbarous  people  this  is 
an  immense  advance,  an  inestimable  benefit.  Ritual 
observance  is  a  taming,  humiliating  process  ;  it  is 
submission  to  law  ;  it  is  the  acknowledgment  of 
spiritual  inferiority  ;  it  implies  self-subjection,  self- 
conquest,  self-sacrifice.  It  is  not  religion  in  its  high- 
est sense,  but  it  is  the  preparation  for  it."  However 
external  or  superstitious  the  rites  of  the  new  faith 
they  could  not  fail  to  impart  in  some  way  the  sense 
of  human  sinfulness,  and  this,  after  all,  is  the  basal 
fact  in  human  progress.  Even  superstitions  and 
crude  beliefs,  which  to-day  we  reject,  deepened  the 
conviction  that  crime  brought  divine  vengeance. 
But  this  consciousness  of  responsibility  to  God,  after 
all,  is  the  sole  foundation  of  political  amelioration. 
A  thousand  times  better  the  most  superstitious  tribe 
that  believes  that  beyond  itself  and  higher  than  it- 
self is  God's  moral  government  and  retribution,  how- 
ever imperfect  may  be  this  conception,  than  the  most 
cultured  realm  which  believes  that  there  is  no  moral 
authority  higher  than  the  State.  Moreover  we  must 
remember  that  there  is  an  evolution  in  the  world  of 
religion  as  there  is  an  evolution  in  the  world  of  na- 

*  "The  Founders  of  Jesuitism,"  in  Stephen's  "  Collected  Es- 
says," p.  130. 


I06     IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

ture.  * '  When  I  was  a  child  I  thought  as  a  child  " 
is  a  truth  that  applies  with  the  widest  sweep.  The 
stages  of  growth  in  the  religious  life  of  nations  and 
individuals  are  ever  the  same — ''first  the  blade,  then 
the  ear,  then  the  full  corn  in  the  ear  ;  "  but  before 
all  this  there  must  be  the  casting  of  the  seed  in  the 
earth. 

Another  result  of  this  nominal  and  rudimentary 
conversion  must  not  be  overlooked.  Its  very  super- 
ficiality rendered  easy  the  supremacy  of  Kome. 
Superstition  is  ever  the  characteristic  of  the  heathen  ; 
conversion  and  civilization  but  slowly  destroy  its 
hold.  Upon  its  follies  and  terror,  as  well  as  upon 
reverence  and  awe,  Eome  securely  founded  her  vast 
system  of  sacerdotal  privilege  and  pretension.  It 
was  superstition  that  added  lightning  to  her  spiritual 
thunders  ;  it  was  this  that  made  men  invest  the  ac- 
tions of  the  saints,  and  the  possession  of  their  relics, 
with  the  constant  recurrence  of  the  miraculous. 
Moreover  if  the  Church  influenced  the  barbarian, 
the  barbarian  was  not  without  his  reaction  on  the 
Church.  We  see  this  in  the  growth  in  the  ritual  of 
the  Church  of  materialized  superstitions.  If  these, 
to  the  modern  mind,  seem  to  differ  but  slightly  from 
the  grossest  idolatries,  we  must  remember  the  wilder 
practices  and  beliefs  from  which  the  heathen  were 
weaned.  We  have  an  illustration  in  the  "Dia- 
logues'^ which  Gregory  the  Great  sent  to  the  Bava- 
rian princess,  Theolinda.  The  excuse  for  the  wild 
legends  with  which  they  are  filled  is  not  only  that 
Gregory  as  well  as  his  readers  profoundly  believed 
them  ;  he  succeeded  by  their  means  in  weaning  the 
Arian  Lombards  to  the  true  faith. 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  107 

Thus  the  history  of  Latin  Christianity  is  the  demon- 
stration that  childishness,  as  well  as  wisdom,  is  justi- 
fied by  her  children.  Eome  grew  because  she  was,  in 
fact,  as  the  modern  biologist  would  phrase  it,  both  in 
creed,  organization,  and  ritual  perfectly  adapted  to  an 
imperfect  environment.  She  ruled  the  age  because 
she  represented  in  herself  its  weakness  as  well  as  its 
strength.  Unlike  the  early  Church  she  took  refuge 
in  a  policy  of  syncretism  or  accommodation.  A  pre- 
mature Protestantism,  with  its  spiritual  methods,  its 
independence  of  material  aids,  its  appeal  to  the  indi- 
vidual intellect  and  conscience,  would  have  been  the 
flinging  of  pearls  before  swine.  Protestantism  is,  in 
fact,  the  triumph  of  the  individual,  conscious  of  his 
supreme  value  and  his  direct  relation  to  God.  In 
Protestantism,  as  in  the  theology  and  ethics  of  St. 
Paul,  the  individual  becomes  a  law  unto  himself 
because  he  has  become  conscious  of  the  unity  of  that 
self  with  a  higher  self.  But  we  must  not  forget  that 
a  St.  Paul  is  both  inexplicable  and  impossible  unless 
we  remember  the  discipline  of  the  Judaism  which 
preceded  him.  So  also  with  Protestantism  and  Eo- 
manism.  To  the  thoughtful  historian  they  are  not 
so  much  opposed  systems  of  truth  as  different  stages 
of  development.  Romanism  tends  to  merge  the  indi- 
vidual in  the  organized  society  ;  her  way  to  the  king- 
dom is  rather  through  obedience  than  through  the 
development  by  the  individual  of  his  full  powers. 
But  every  thoughtful  man  will  own  that  in  the  nurs- 
ery, whether  of  the  world  or  the  home,  obedience  to 
organized  authority  must  come  first ;  only  through 
such  obedience,  mechanical  even  and  formal,  will  the 
child  or  the  nation  attain,  in  the  fullness  of-  times, 


Io8      IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

to  the  higher  growths  of  intellect  and  soul,  to  that 
obedience  which  comes  from  the  inner  constraint  of 
conscience,  and  to  that  freedom  which  is  the  follow- 
ing out  with  gladness  the  unhindered  development  of 
one's  highest  self  as  well  as  the  complete  recognition 
of  the  claims  of  the  larger  whole  of  which  the  indi- 
vidual is  but  a  part. 

So  important,  in  our  judgment,  is  this  line  of  argu- 
ment, especially  for  the  historian  surveying  with 
philosophic  and  yet  reverend  mind  the  progress  of 
humanity,  that  we  would  linger  upon  it.  We  would 
claim  that  our  debt  to  the  mediaeval  Church  must  not 
be  measured  only  by  such  ethical  results,  much  less 
by  the  means  of  their  attainment,  as  commend  them- 
selves to  the  twentieth  century.  The  reader  too  often 
forgets  the  evolution,  slow  and  painful,  of  society  and 
morals,  and  in  consequence  neglects,  in  reading  his- 
tory, to  look  at  progress  from  the  standpoint  of  that 
which  was  attainable  in  the  age  in  question.  When 
thus  considered  relatively,  forces  and  tendencies  which 
to-day  we  should  condemn  as  mischievous,  are  seen 
to  have  been,  at  their  time  and  for  their  purpose, 
potent  for  good  ;  though  the  good  was  not  unmixed 
with  evil,  and  was  often  pregnant  with  coming  catas- 
trophe. We  may  illustrate  by  the  medigeval  doctrine 
of  penitence,  especially  the  corollaries  of  this  mediae- 
val doctrine,  the  system  of  indulgences  and  the  peni- 
tentials.  As  regards  indulgences — the  great  abuse  of 
the  system, — the  chief  errors  sprang  up  in  the  four- 
teenth and  fifteenth  centuries,  largely  as  an  outcome 
of  the  Crusades.  The  penitentials  and  their  effects 
were  of  an  earlier  age.  This  great  instrument  for 
Christianizing  barbarian  tempers,  the  doctrinal  basis 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  I09 

of  which  may  be  found  in  the  acts  and  teaching  of 
Ambrose,  was  probably  the  creation  of  the  Irish 
Church  and,  in  special,  of  Columban.  Thence 
through  the  great  English  archbishop,  Theodore  of 
Tarsus,  the  penitentials  passed  into  general  use  in 
the  Church  of  the  West.  An  attempt  at  codification 
of  the  different  systems  in  vogue  formed  part  of  the 
reforms  of  Charles  the  Great ;  their  use  was  one  of 
the  forces  on  which  he  relied  for  reducing  his  empire 
to  order.  In  due  time  the  older  penitentials  gave 
place  to  the  scholastic  sacrament  of  penance,  and 
were  forgotten. 

In  condemnation  of  the  principles  and  methods  of 
the  whole  system  historians  are  nowadays  substan- 
tially agreed.  As  Dr.  Plummer  truly  remarks  in  his 
Introduction  to  his  classic  edition  of  Bede's  "  Historia 
Ecclesise,"  '^The  penitential  literature  is  in  truth  a 
deplorable  feature  of  the  mediseval  Church.  Evil 
deeds,  the  imagination  of  which  may  perhaps  have 
dimly  floated  through  our  minds  in  our  darkest  mo- 
ments, are  here  translated  and  reduced  to  system.  It 
is  hard  to  see  how  any  one  could  busy  himself  with 
such  literature  and  not  be  the  worse  for  it."  And  yet 
such  a  view,  though  perfectly  correct,  may  be  an  in- 
stance of  the  difficulty  of  thinking  historically.  For 
the  student  should  never  forget  the  great  law  illus- 
trated on  every  page  of  ecclesiastical  history,  ^'that 
those  beliefs  or  institutions  which  seem  irrational  or 
absurd,  or  unworthy  of  the  Christian  spirit,  have 
come  into  vogue  in  order  to  kill  some  deeper  evil, 
not  otherwise  to  have  been  destroyed. "  ^  The  peni- 
tentials were  a  necessity  if  the  Church  was  to  bring 
^  Allen,  "  Christian  Institutions,"  p.  408. 


no      IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC   FCKCES 

the  masses  that  had  nominally  passed  into  the  king- 
dom of  Christ  yet  remained  in  many  respects  heathen 
in  heart  and  practice,  into  a  working  acquaintance 
with  the  elementary  laws  of  decency  and  hygiene,  let 
alone  into  any  real  experience  of  religion.  They  were 
a  rough  method  of  enforcing  obedience  to  moral  law 
upon  a  rough  people,  and  of  holding  down  the  usages 
and  reminiscences  of  heathenism.  In  the  mediseval 
Church,  unlike  the  Church  of  the  first  four  centuries, 
baptism  came  first,  oftentimes  the  baptism  of  whole 
races  received  as  they  were  into  the  Church  of  the 
Empire  which  they  had  conquered  ;  training  and 
discipline  must  needs  follow.  The  catechumen  work, 
which  had  once  been  preparatory  to  admission  into 
the  Church,  had  now  to  be  done  for  those  who  were 
already  nominally  Christians,  and  who,  intellectually 
and  morally,  were  much  less  able  to  understand  it. 

Penance,  to  adopt  for  this  system  of  discipline  the 
familiar  title  nowadays  somewhat  restricted  in  its 
application,  was  thus  no  mere  creation  of  a  greedy 
sacerdotalism,  but  a  response  to  popular  needs,  the 
outcome  of  the  revolution  produced  by  the  barbarian 
invasions.  In  the  world  in  transition  no  state  save 
the  Church  was  either  strong  enough  or  civilized 
enough  to  enforce  obedience  to  moral  law,  or  hold 
down  the  usages  and  reminiscences  of  heathenism. 
In  her  capacity  as  the  guardian  of  conduct  and 
morals  the  Churches  punishments  were  at  first  limited 
to  those  sanctioned  by  the  pains  or  fears  of  the 
wounded  conscience.  Unfortunately  the  Church  soon 
yielded  to  the  Teutonic  custom  of  commuting  mis- 
deeds by  a  money  payment,  or  by  means  of  sub- 
stitutes.   Hence  the  opening  of  the  door  to  the  abuse 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  III 

of  indulgences.  In  the  earlier  age  the  chief  defect 
of  the  system  lay  in  the  fact  that  punishment  bore 
more  hardly  on  the  poor  than  on  the  rich,  while 
above  all  it  made  sin  something  arbitrary  and  ex- 
ternal to  the  soul.  The  priest  also  who  could  release 
from  the  punishments  of  the  Church  on  earth,  or 
whose  prayers  had  power  with  God  in  the  mysterious 
other  world  of  retribution,  took  the  place  of  the 
Christ  who  could  purify  the  heart.  Thus  the  pope 
and  not  the  Holy  Spirit  became  the  administrator 
of  mercy  and  pardon.  The  human  race  became  afraid 
of  dealing  directly  with  God,  and  sacerdotalism  won 
its  long  triumph. 

The  other  evils  of  the  system  of  penance  have  been 
often  exposed,  and  are  sufficiently  familiar.  On  its 
theoretical  side  it  was  a  complicated  system  that 
needed  a  trained  intelligence  to  understand  or  ex- 
plain, upon  some  details  of  which  Eoman  theologians 
were  always  sharply  divided.  As  usually  happens 
with  such  a  system  it  was  speedily  perverted  by  the 
people.  The  student  of  ethics  will  point  out  the 
tendency,  always  natural  to  the  Eoman  spirit,  to 
stiffen  all  morality  into  legal  restrictions,  and  to 
confound  the  inner  law  with  the  regulations  of  the 
Church.  Or  he  may  dwell  on  the  worst  effects  of  the 
system  as  seen  in  the  development  of  the  penance  of 
flagellation  and  the  sudden  apparition  in  the  middle 
of  the  thirteenth  century  of  the  Flagellants.  Of  the 
former  the  classic  example  is  St.  Elizabeth  of 
Thuringia  (-fl231),  a  woman  of  the  rarest  self- 
abnegation  and  spiritual  aspirations,  whom  the 
fanaticism  of  Conrad  of  Marburg  sought  to  break 
into  perfect  obedience  by  constant  scourging,  stripped 


112      IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

to  her  sliift.  He  may  instance  the  madness  of  that 
typical  hermit  of  the  eleventh  century,  Domiuicus 
Loricatus,  who  with  a  broom  in  each  hand  and  sing- 
ing psalms,  could  wipe  off,  as  his  friend,  Peter 
Damiani,  relates  with  pride,  a  century  of  guilt 
within  a  week.  In  the  outbreak  of  the  Flagellants 
(1259),  this  rude  form  of  penance  became  a  danger- 
ous, contagious  disease.  Tens  of  thousands  of  all 
ranks  and  ages  in  the  cities  of  ^Northern  Italy  walked 
in  solemn  procession,  scourging  themselves  until  the 
blood  ran.  Thence  the  movement  spread  to  the 
Ehinelands  and  Germany,  but  disappeared  as  rapidly 
as  it  had  arisen.  A  century  later,  as  the  result  of 
the  Black  Death,  Europe  was  again  covered  with 
bands  of  Flagellants,  stripped  to  the  waist,  scourg- 
ing themselves  with  thongs  knotted  with  iron  spikes. 
They  believed  that  this  torture,  continued  for  thirty- 
three  days  and  a  half,  would  deliver  the  soul  from  all 
taint  of  sin.  The  theologian,  finally,  in  condemna- 
tion of  the  system  will  point  to  the  constant  haggling 
and  bargaining  over  the  degree  of  sin  and  the  value 
of  merit,  or  he  may  relate  the  numberless  instances 
of  desperate  abuse,  a  chicken  or  a  pint  of  wine  pur- 
chasing absolution  for  the  foulest  deeds. 

These  evils  should  not  be  minimized  ;  nor  should 
their  exaggeration  obscure  the  real  inwardness  to  the 
mediaeval  mind  of  the  doctrine  and  its  corollaries. 
As  Harnack  allows,  its  first  effect  was  the  deepening 
of  the  sense  of  sin,  though  the  deepening  was  counter- 
balanced in  time  by  the  stupefying  readiness  with 
which  men  confessed  that  they  were  sinners. 
Through  the  doctrine  of  penance  men  learned  that 
love  and  suffering  are  one.     Another  effect  was  the 


OF  THE   MIDDLE  AGES  II3 

formation  side  by  side  with  the  sacramental  Christ 
of  the  image  of  the  historical  Jesus,  in  the  con- 
templation of  whose  sufferings  Bernard  and  others 
found  their  most  passionate  exaltation.  In  the 
doctrine,  first  suggested  by  the  English  doctor 
Alexander  of  Hales,  and  develoj)ed  by  Thomas 
Aquinas,  of  the  common  treasury  of  merit  out  of 
whose  inexhaustible  store  the  pope  could  dispense  to 
the  spiritually  destitute,  we  see  another  instance  of 
the  dominant  medisevai  conception  of  solidarity  so 
unintelligible  to  nineteenth  century  individualism. 
In  everything  the  social  aim  predominates ;  the 
duties  of  life  spring  out  of  our  unity  as  a  race  ; 
humanity  on  earth  is  one  in  its  sufferings  with 
humanity  in  the  invisible  world.  All  this  formed 
part  of  the  education  of  the  race  for  better  things  to 
come. 

II 
By  a  natural  transition  we  pass  from  the  study  of 
the  penitentials,  as  an  illustration  of  the  nature  of 
mediieval  conventions,  to  the  consideration  of  an- 
other matter,  the  right  understauding  of  which  lies 
at  the  root  of  insight  into  all  mediaeval  matters.  We 
allude  to  the  discrei)ancy  in  mediaeval  life  between 
its  ethical  and  spiritual  ideals  and  the  spotted 
actualities  of  its  daily  life.  Practice,  it  is  true,  in 
every  age  must  always  drop  below  the  ethical  stand- 
ard, unless  indeed  the  ethical  standard  is  of  a  low 
average.  Certainly  Christian  practice,  save  for  the 
saint,  can  never  attain  the  ideal  as  it  is  in  the  great 
Exemplar.  Even  in  Greece  and  Eome  we  see  the 
contrast  of  practice  and  precept.  But  in  neither 
Greece  nor  Eome  could  there  exist  the  abysmal  con- 


114      IDEALS   AND  ANTAGONISTIC   FORCES 

tradictions  which  we  find  abound  in  mediaeval  Chris- 
tianity. 

The  reason,  of  course,  is  obvious.  The  ethical 
standard  of  Greece  and  Eome  were  finite  and  human. 
They  were  the  results  of  the  introspective  thoughts 
of  its  philosophers,  and  could  not  rise  higher  than 
their  own  source.  But  the  Christian  ideal  of  con- 
duct involved  the  supernatural  and  infinite ;  the 
source  and  example  was  the  perfection  of  the  one  Di- 
vine Life  on  earth.  With  the  Greek  time  was  of  the 
essence  of  the  ideal ;  the  ancient  demanded  a  standard 
that  could  be  fulfilled  on  earth.  With  the  Christian 
the  ideal  was  from  the  first  brought  into  relation 
with  the  great  Beyond  ;  the  will  of  God  as  it  is  done 
in  heaven  is  the  daily  rule  for  men's  will  on  earth. 
With  the  Greek  or  Eoman, — for  instance,  the  noblest 
stoic  of  them  all,  Marcus  Aurelius, — ethics  were  lim- 
ited to  present-day  duty  ;  the  other  world  had  no 
message  of  hope.  With  the  Christian  this  life  was 
but  the  schoolhouse.  For  him,  as  for  Browning's 
grammarian, 

*'  Actual  life  comes  next. 
Man  has  Forever." 

He  sums  up  its  possibilities  both  for  the  now  and  the 
hereafter  in  the  golden  thought :  *' Beloved  now  are 
we  the  sons  of  God,  and  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what 
we  shall  be.  Bat  we  know  that  when  it  shall  be 
made  manifest  we  shall  be  like  him." 

Contradiction  therefore  between  the  ideal  and  the 
actual  in  Christianity  was  sharp  and  inevitable,  and 
only  could  have  been  avoided  by  a  Christianity  that 
came  down  to  the  level  of  human  nature  itself.     The 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  II5 

gospel  of  salvation  was  necessarily,  both  for  the  in- 
dividual and  the  race,  a  gospel  of  contradiction  be- 
tween the  ideal  upheld  and  life's  common  cravings 
and  passions.  Such  contrast  every  man  feels  within 
his  own  heart ;  and  this  law  of  the  microcosm  has 
ever  been  the  law  of  the  world  at  large.  But  never 
has  the  contradiction  between  the  ideal  and  the 
actual  been  more  vivid  than  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
And  this  for  a  double  reason.  The  contradiction 
would  have  been  less  sharp  and  painful  had  the  ideal 
been  lowered,  or  had  human  nature  been  worthier. 
But,  to  the  eternal  glory  of  the  mediaeval  Church, 
whatever  its  practice,  it  never  lowered  its  standard. 
On  the  contrary,  the  very  simplicity  of  an  age  that 
knew  nothing  of  introspection  or  higher  criticism 
gave  to  the  ideal  a  literal  sharpness  of  outline,  inex- 
plicable to  a  more  complex  generation.  Neverthe- 
less this  literalness  produced  such  mighty  saints  as 
St.  Bernard,  St.  Francis,  or  St.  Catherine  of  Siena. 
The  mediaeval  saint,  in  fact,  towers  above  all  other 
saints,  simply  because  he  knew  nothing  of  twentieth 
century  adaptations  of  the  Gospel  to  the  need  of  busi- 
ness, pleasure,  knowledge,  politics,  and  imperialism. 
But  while  the  mediaeval  saint  thus  set  before  himself 
an  ideal  far  more  difficult  and  transcendent  than 
those  in  vogue  to-day,  on  the  other  hand  the  ethical 
capacities  of  the  average  mediaeval  man  were  far 
lower  than  those  of  to-day.  For  it  is  the  weakness 
of  the  twentieth  century,  as  well  as  its  strength,  that 
between  the  ethics  of  the  street  and  the  pew  there  is 
not  an  overwhelming  difference.  In  the  twentieth 
century,  therefore,  we  are  not  troubled  by  the  glar- 
ing contradictions  between  ideal  and  practice ;  if 


Il6      IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

anything  it  is  the  ideal  that  needs  raising  ;  it  is  too 
much  smirched  with  the  dust  of  what  is  deemed 
practicable.  But  in  the  Middle  Ages  the  average 
man  was  but  a  savage  once  removed,  the  long  cen- 
turies of  whose  superstition  and  vicious  practices 
could  not  be  eradicated  by  a  few  years  of  sacraments 
and  teaching.  The  student,  therefore,  will  make  but 
little  progress  in  the  understanding  of  the  early 
mediaeval  Church  who  does  not  sympathetically  bear 
in  mind  the  inevitable  contradiction  between  the 
ideals,  sublime  beyond  measure,  of  the  saint,  and  the 
pit,  noisesome,  dark  and  barbarous,  from  which  the 
actual  life  of  men  was  digged.  Eeligion,  in  fact,  was 
reverenced  as  a  thing  external,  the  special  concern 
of  a  priestly  class  whose  merits  the  community 
vicariously  shared.  The  application  of  inward  re- 
ligion by  the  laymen  to  the  round  of  life  in  the  castle, 
in  the  camp,  in  the  shop  or  in  the  field,  was  an  ideal 
of  whose  realization  the  Church  only  slowly  began  to 
dream.  Not  until  St.  Francis  founded  his  order  of 
Tertiaries  do  we  find  it  taken  up  in  any  organized  form. 
Another  matter  should  be  noted.  To  the  twentieth 
century  contradiction  between  ideal  and  practice  is  a 
difficulty  which  for  the  mediaeval  mind  does  not  seem 
to  have  existed.  The  Middle  Ages  sought,  of  course, 
to  reconcile  belief  and  practice,  but  their  failure  led 
neither  to  subtle  questionings  nor  rebellion.  The 
more  deeply  they  outraged  the  one,  the  more  tena- 
ciously they  clung  to  the  other.  This  was  not  wholly 
the  homage  paid  by  vice  to  virtue  but  was  partly  due 
to  the  consciousness  of  solidarity.  Laxity  of  practice 
was  the  concern  of  the  individual.  It  might  involve 
the  loss  of  his  soul  j  but  laxity  of  belief  or  in  ideal 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  II7 

meant  the  downfall  of  the  social  structure.  So  in  an 
age  when  an  individual  did  not  recognize  himself 
save  in  so  far  as  he  formed  part  of  State  or  Church,  the 
theories  and  ideals  of  social  and  ecclesiastical  economy- 
were  everything,  the  facts  of  private  life  of  little  mo- 
ment. Men  were  saved  both  in  this  world  and  in  the 
life  to  come  by  their  fitting  in  with  the  whole  through 
correctness  of  dogma  and  doctrine.  It  were  the 
easiest  of  tasks  to  find  illustrations  of  vice  that 
would  have  brought  a  blush  to  the  pagans  of  Eome, 
yet  coupled  with  an  astonishing  religious  scrupu- 
losity. Ferocious  and  sensual,  the  Middle  Ages  wor- 
shipped humility  and  asceticism.  There  has  never 
been  a  purer  ideal  of  love  than  in  the  romances  of  its 
chivalry,  as  purified  by  Walter  de  Map  and  others, 
nor  a  grosser  profligacy  of  life. 

Of  the  illogicalness  of  the  age  there  is,  perhaps,  no 
greater  illustration  than  the  extraordinary  case  of 
Honorius.  The  fact  that  in  680  the  sixth  Ecumenical 
Council  publicly  anathematized  this  pope  for  mono- 
theistic heresies  formed  no  bar  to  papal  claims  of 
infallibility.  When  facts  would  not  square  with  doc- 
trine, then  so  much  the  worse  for  the  facts.  The 
very  recollection  of  the  circumstance  undoubtedly 
faded  away  in  the  eighth  century,  until  revived  by 
the  controversialists  of  the  sixteenth.  But  the  whole 
history  of  the  papacy  supplies  similar  contradictions. 
Let  the  student,  for  instance,  turn  over  the  annals  of 
Rome  in  the  tenth  and  early  eleventh  centuries.  For 
Europe  at  large  the  pope  was  the  vicar  of  God. 
Mighty  kings,  Cnut  among  them,  journeyed  from 
afar  that  they  might  receive  his  blessing.  He  dwelt 
in  an  Eden  of  beauty  where  the  gates  of  heaven  were 


Il8      IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

never  shut.  His  spiritual  thunders  were  more  potent 
than  legions  of  armed  warriors.  But  as  an  actual 
fact  in  Eome  herself  for  a  couple  of  centuries  the 
pope  was  the  sport  of  faction,  raised,  deposed,  rev- 
erenced or  murdered,  according  to  the  varying  mood 
and  largesse  of  the  hour.  At  the  commencement  of 
the  tenth  century  in  eight  years  several  popes  were 
elected  and  overthrown.  The  greatest  of  all  the 
popes,  Hildebrand,  who  claimed  that  he  "alone  held 
the  keys  of  heaven  and  hell,  alone  was  able  to  bind 
and  loose  on  earth  as  in  heaven,  to  give  and  to  take 
away  according  to  the  merits  of  each  man,  empires, 
kingdoms,  marquisites,  duchies,  countships  and  the 
possessions  of  all  men,"  who  made  the  papacy  the 
dominant  force  in  the  system  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
died  in  exile,  driven  away  from  his  own  city. 

In  the  same  spirit  men  treated  the  Holy  Eoman 
Empire — pope  and  emperor  were  supposed  to  be  like 
the  Siamese  twins,  two  and  yet  one.  Severance  be- 
tween the  two  was  impossible  ;  they  must  work  to- 
gether for  the  one  common  good  of  the  one  common 
flock.  They  were  the  sun  and  moon  which  lightened 
the  world's  darkness.  But  this  complete  accord  of 
the  papal  and  imperial  powers,  as  Dr.  Bryce  points 
out,  was  never  attained  but  three  times  in  the  history 
of  the  centuries  :  in  the  time  of  Charles  the  Great  and 
Leo ;  under  Otto  III  and  his  two  popes,  Gregory  V 
and  Sylvester  II ;  thirdly  under  Henry  III ;  certainly 
never  thenceforth.  At  all  times  pope  and  emperor 
were  seeking  to  subordinate  the  other  to  himself ;  the 
pope  declaring  that  he  made  the  emperor  as  the  vicar 
of  God  and  that  the  temporal  power  was  his  gift ;  the 
emperors  seeking  to  get  the  election  of  popes  into 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  II9 

their  own  hands  and  to  subordinate  the  spiritual  to 
the  civil  authority.  This  battle  of  the  two  forms  the 
centre  round  which  revolves  the  churchmanship  and 
politics  of  the  Middle  Ages,  especially  in  Italy  and 
Germany.  But  the  battle  could  never  have  arisen 
had  it  not  been  for  the  extraordinary  influence  upon 
the  mediaeval  mind  of  ideas  and  ideals,  and  its 
equally  extraordinary  capacity  to  overlook  dis- 
crepancy. 

The  illustrations  of  the  essential  contradictoriness 
of  the  Middle  Ages  are  endless.  The  contrast  between 
its  ideal  and  practice  is  the  cause  of  its  endless  at- 
tempts at  reform,  and  the  secret  of  the  extraordinary 
fascination  of  mediaeval  history  in  general.  In  me- 
diaeval Christianity  there  is  no  dull,  drab  plain  of 
featureless,  logical  uniformity  that  the  historian 
traverses  with  respect  but  fatigue  ;  peaks  tower  into 
the  clear  blue  with  bewildering  abruptness  from 
pestilential  swamps.  Take  Monasticism,  for  in- 
stance ;  to  the  mediaeval  mind  the  highest  possible 
mode  of  Christian  living.  Its  story,  as  we  shall  see 
more  fully  in  a  later  lecture,  is  a  long  record  of  alter- 
nate swamp  and  mountain  top  ;  of  an  ideal  so  tran- 
scendent that  men  inevitably  fell  away,  until  some 
new  reformer  once  more  restored  the  lost  vision. 
But  the  constant,  glaring  contrasts  between  the  ideals 
and  the  actualities  of  monastic  life  never  caused  the 
mediaeval  mind  to  question  the  worth  of  the  ideal 
itself. 

Ill 

We  should  do  well  to  inquire  what  it  was  in  the 
life  and  thought  of  the  mediaeval  Church,  apart  from 


I20      IDEALS   AND   ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

its  undoubted  spiritual  power,  that  especially  made 
for  civilization  in  its  relations  with  the  rough  ma- 
terial left  by  the  barbarian  conquests.  One  word  of 
caution  is  advisable  at  the  outset.  In  our  discussion 
we  shall  deal  with  the  matter  in  an  abstract  fashion, 
examining  the  forces  and  processes  of  society  much 
as  the  anatomist  examines  an  organism  or  bodily 
framework.  From  such  examination  much  may  be 
learned.  But  we  must  never  forget  that  more  impor- 
tant far  than  organic  framework  is  the  life  of  which 
this  frame  is  but  the  outer  shell.  And  it  was  neither 
the  logic  of  its  theology,  the  strength  of  its  organiza- 
tions, the  fascination  of  its  religious  rites,  nor  even  its 
multitudinous  charities  and  social  activities,  but  the 
life  of  Christ  manifesting  itself  abundantly  in  the 
medisBval  Church — poor,  incomplete,  inconsistent, 
as  may  at  times  have  been  its  expression — that  saved 
the  world  from  the  deluge  of  barbarism  and  restored 
civilization.  For,  in  spite  of  all  shortcomings,  there 
has  never  been  a  time  when  the  Church  has  forgotten 
its  divine  mission  as  the  representative  of  Him  who 
came  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to  minister.  Even 
in  the  dreariest  days  God  has  not  left  Himself  without 
His  witnesses ;  men  and  women  not  a  few,  whose 
lives,  made  radiant  by  the  Cross,  have  filled  with 
light  the  darkest  places.  In  every  age,  even  in  those 
in  which  the  life  of  the  Church  has  seemed  at  its 
lowest,  the  greatest  force  that  has  made  for  civiliza- 
tion and  uplifting  has  been  the  continued  vitality  of 
the  great  principles  of  the  Gospel  ;  its  insistence,  in 
season  and  out  of  season,  upon  self-sacrifice  and  re- 
nunciation ;  its  abounding  altruism  ;  the  value  given 
to  the  poorest  and  meanest  as  the  brother  for  whom 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  121 

Christ  died  ;  the  stress  laid  upon  siu  as  the  blot  on 
human  life,  the  hindrance  to  further  progress,  the 
cause  of  inevitable  retribution ;  the  revolution  effected 
by  the  teaching  of  a  future  life,  the  bringing  in  of  a 
new  world  to  redress  the  balance  of  the  old,  with  its 
doctrine  of  judgment  and  consequent  rewards  and 
punishments. 

In  our  enumeration  of  the  factors  in  Christianity 
that  have  made  for  the  regeneration  of  mankind  we 
must  not  overlook  its  optimism.  The  crude  doctrine 
of  total  depravity  enunciated  by  St.  Augustine  has 
never  succeeded  in  banishing,  in  practice,  the  belief 
of  the  Church  that  the  latent  powers  which  make  for 
righteousness  exceed  those  which  are  evil ;  that  even 
in  the  far  country  man  is  not  far  from  the  kingdom 
of  God  ;  and  that  human  nature,  on  the  whole,  is  on 
the  side  of  the  angels.  The  great  uplifting  forces  of 
humanity  have  always  manifested  this  abounding 
optimism,  and  have  demonstrated  that  Pessimism  is 
of  the  evil  one.  Illustrations  abound,  but  nowhere 
is  this  radiant  optimism  more  conspicuous  than  in  the 
Franciscan  revival.  Brother  Eufifino,  of  whom  we 
are  told  that  *' whether  asleep  or  awake  his  mind  was 
always  with  the  Lord,"  narrates  that  when  he  saw 
the  Saviour  His  sign  to  him  was  this  :  ''As  long  as 
thou  shalt  live  thou  shalt  no  more  feel  sadness  nor 
melancholy  :  he  that  made  thee  sad  was  the  devil." 
In -the  optimism  of  Calvary  the  friars  everywhere 
made  common  life  with  the  poor,  choosing  for  their 
houses  the  most  neglected  quarters — in  London  the 
stinking  lane  and  shambles  of  Newgate, — helping  the 
labourers  to  gather  the  olives  or  strip  the  vineyards  ; 
ministering  to  the  lepers,  and  undertaking  the  coars- 


122      IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

est  toils  imposed  by  charity  ;  siuging  the  while  their 
hymDS  of  joy,  or  making  merry,  like  children  at  a 
feast,  over  the  broken  scraps  tossed  to  them  from  the 
rich  man's  table.  The  servants  of  God,  said  St. 
Francis,  are  really  ^'jugglers"  and  ''must  revive 
the  hearts  of  men  ^'  and  lead  them  to  spiritual  joy. 
He  called  himself  "God's  troubadour";  he  deemed 
perfection  and  joy  equivalent  terms.  The  astonish- 
ing thing  is  that  St.  Francis  made  thousands  to  feel 
the  truth  of  this  transcendent  optimism. 

With  these  necessary  cautions  we  are  now  in  a  po- 
sition to  approach  the  abstract  question  :  what  was  it 
in  the  mediaeval  Church  that  especially  enabled  it  to 
fulfill  its  task  as  the  formative  factor  in  mediaeval 
civilization?  We  shall  best  obtain  an  answer  by 
asking  the  further  question  :  what  were  the  essential 
features  of  the  barbarians  whose  taming  fell  to  the 
lot  of  the  Church  ?  By  this  we  do  not  intend  a  cata- 
logue of  vices — cruelty,  lust,  bloodshed,  and  the  like. 
These,  it  might  fairly  be  contended,  were  as  marked 
characteristics  of  the  Eomans  as  of  the  barbarian 
victors.  We  would  look  deeper ;  can  we  find  in 
barbarism  a  general  formula  of  which  its  various 
aspects  are  in  the  main  the  expression  ?  Can  we  find 
a  similar  general  formula  that  is  characteristic  of  the 
life  of  the  mediaeval  Church  ?     We  think  we  can. 

The  great  central  principle  of  barbarism,  as  we  see 
it  at  work  in  the  Western  world  on  the  break  up  of 
the  Empire,  is  its  essential  individualism.  The  limit 
of  outlook  is  the  local  tribe ;  neighbour  and  enemy 
are  almost  interchangeable  terms.  The  one  bond  of 
solidarity  is  the  great  chief,  and  the  usages,  customs 
and  taboos  that  centuries  of  superstition  had  turned 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  1 23 

into  bonds  more  unbreakable  than  steel.  The  state 
as  state — a  collective  fact,  not  the  mere  expression 
of  loyalty  to  or  fear  of  the  individual  chief — is  un- 
known. In  consequence  all  political  matters  are  in 
constant  flux.  As  in  the  lower  organisms,  kingdoms 
divide  and  subdivide,  or  reunite  their  fragments, 
with  amazing  facility.  Generalizations  are  often 
dangerous,  but  we  shall  not  err  widely  in  summing 
up  the  inner  spirit  of  barbarism  as  unregulated  in- 
dividualism, or  anarchism. 

One  illustration  of  this  position  must  suf&ce.  The 
Viking,  sailing  from  his  Northern  home,  thinks 
little  or  nothing  of  the  spread  of  his  empire,  casts 
few  looks  behind,  is  bound  by  no  links  of  loyalty. 
The  sentiments  which  in  a  later  age  were  an  excuse 
or  justification  for  conquest  were  wholly  lacking. 
He  sails  hither  and  thither— Normandy,  Ireland, 
Constantinople  itself,  no  matter  where, — indifferent 
to  all  save  the  impulses  of  the  moment.  If  he 
settles,  it  is  not  as  a  colonist  pushing  forward  the 
frontiers  of  his  native  state.  Whether  as  Varangian 
in  Eussia,  or  Norman  in  France,  he  forgets  the  old 
and  founds  a  new  home.  The  very  intensity  of  his 
individualism,  unfettered  by  national  or  local  out- 
look or  lasting  tradition,  enables  him  rapidly  to 
adapt  himself  to  his  new  environment.  Even  lan- 
guage, the  one  feature,  besides  his  religion,  which 
links  him  to  his  former  associates,  is  to  him  so 
essentially  an  individual  matter  that  he  is  willing, 
under  pressure,  to  cast  it  aside  for  the  tongue  of  the 
people  he  has  conquered,  as  he  had  already  cast 
aside  his  rude  religion.  The  Frank  in  Gaul,  the 
Norman   in  France  or  Apulia,    the    Varangian    in 


124     IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

Russia,  the  Lombard  in  Italy  are  but  a  few  of  tlie 
illustrations  of  this  principle  that  we  could  furnish. 
In  Russia  the  house  of  the  Norseman,  Rurik,  became 
the  ruling  family  of  a  Slav  people. 

Nor  was  it  only  among  the  barbarians  that  we  find 
particularist  tendencies.  We  see  the  same  fatal  proc- 
ess at  work  in  states  at  one  remove  from  barbar- 
ism, e.  g.j  in  the  Carolingian  Empire.  Or,  perhaps, 
it  would  be  more  accurate  to  look  upon  the  Empire 
founded  by  Charles  the  Great  as  itself  the  interlude. 
By  his  genius  he  had  knit  together  for  a  while  a  dis- 
membered Europe.  With  his  death  a  fictitious  order 
once  more  gives  place  to  natural  anarchy,  and  his 
empire  dissolves  into  its  primitive  units.  For  cen- 
turies this  seemed  to  be  the  law  of  politics.  The 
kingdom,  whose  unity  has  been  painfully  accom- 
plished by  the  labours  of  some  hero,  ever  tends  to 
fall  back  into  an  aggregation  of  counties  loosely 
bound  together  by  shadowy  ties,  which  are  yet  too 
weak  to  prevent  constant,  internecine  strife.  The 
period  of  the  Heptarchy  followed  in  the  eleventh 
century  by  the  great  Saxon  earldoms  was  not  pe- 
culiar to  England ;  what  was  peculiar  was  the 
speedy  deliverance  of  our  country,  through  the 
great  blessing  of  the  Norman  Conquest,  from  the 
centrifugal  forces  which  on  the  Continent,  especially 
in  Germany,  wrecked  all  attempts  at  political  unity. 
Not  until  three  hundred  years  later  was  France 
enabled  to  establish  a  centralized  authority,  while 
even  then  such  great  fiefs  as  Brittany,  Burgundy, 
and  Toulouse  ever  threatened  disintegration.  The 
student  of  to-day  is  apt  to  be  misled  by  such  modern 
facts  as  Spain,  Italy  and  Germany  into  forgetting 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  1 25 

that  in  the  Middle  Ages  these  countries  were  split 
up  into  an  indescribable  number  of  semi-independent 
duchies,  counties,  bishoprics,  and  the  like.  In  Ger- 
many, for  instance,  at  the  Eeformation  there  were 
2,000  different  states,  only  loosely  held  together  in 
the  unity  of  the  Holy  Eoman  Empire.  Spain,  after 
suffering  much  from  its  Saracen  invaders,  only  be- 
came one  at  the  dawn  of  the  Eeformation.  Italy 
has  had  to  wait  for  its  unity  until  a  time  within 
recent  memory.  But  for  the  assistance  given  by 
the  Church  the  forces  of  disintegration  might  have 
become  supreme. 

In  contrast  to  this  unregulated  individualism  of 
the  barbarian,  we  find,  when  we  proceed  to  examine 
the  media3val  economy,  that  its  essential  fact  is  the 
principle  of  solidarity.  The  effort  of  human  society 
in  the  Middle  Ages  is  to  fit  itself  in  with  great  in- 
stitutions, or  rather  with  the  governing  ideas  of  such 
institutions,  by  the  sinking  of  the  individual  in 
some  form  of  corporate  life.  This  it  was  that  gave 
its  strength  to  feudalism,  which,  on  one  side  of  its 
theory,  is  the  attempt  to  give  every  man  his  place 
in  the  social  economy.  But  feudalism  was  but  the 
half-way  house  to  an  ideal  still  higher.  Instead  of 
the  struggle  of  clan  with  clan  we  find  the  conception 
of  a  world-empire  and  a  world-Church,  each  so 
organized  and  planned  that  every  part  falls  nat- 
urally into  its  own  place.  Of  these  two  the  second 
is  the  more  important ;  the  unity  of  all  in  one 
Catholic  Church  under  one  spiritual  head,  the  pope, 
the  representative  of  Christ,  lies  at  the  root  of  the 
notion  of  one  Holy  Eoman  Empire  under  an  em- 
peror or  representative  of  Caesar.     But  this  concep- 


126      IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

tion  of  the  Holy  Eomaii  Empire,  linked  up  as  it  was 
with  the  supremacy  of  the  papacy,  is  too  important 
to  be  dismissed  in  a  paragraph,  and  will  demand 
further  investigation.  Suffice  for  the  present  that 
we  note  that  by  how  much  more  Christ  is  greater 
than  Caesar  by  so  much  more  must  the  unity  of  all 
in  one  Church  exceed  the  unity  of  all  in  one  Em- 
pire ;  let  alone  that  the  first  was  real,  the  second 
but  a  dream. 

The  absorption  of  the  individual  into  a  corpora- 
tion, primarily  spiritual  but  with  a  secondary  out- 
look upon  the  political,  is  thus  the  key  to  mediaeval 
life  and  thought.  We  have  an  illustration  of  this  in 
the  greatest  and  most  characteristic  of  all  mediaeval 
poems.  Dante's  ''  Divine  Comedy"  represents  for  us 
the  salvation  of  the  poet,  but  that  salvation  is  only 
achieved  by  a  scheme  which  brings  within  its  com- 
pass universal  man,  and  which  takes  us  for  its  ac- 
complishment through  all  the  circles  of  earth,  heaven 
V  and  hell.  The  religious  life  of  the  individual  was 
but  in  a  slight  sense  a  matter  of  his  own  experience. 
The  value  and  place  of  experience,  in  fact,  was  re- 
discovered by  Luther,  though  wrapped  up  by  him 
in  his  cryptic  watchword  :  the  just  shall  live  by  faith. 
But  from  first  to  last  the  mediaeval  man  and  the  life 
of  his  soul  was  conditioned  and  determined  by  his 
corporate  relations ;  his  baptism  into  the  corpora- 
tion ;  his  participation  in  her  sacraments ;  his  de- 
pendence upon  a  priestly  caste,  and  the  like.  Just 
as  in  the  secular  mediaeval  state  the  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual was  conditioned  by  his  guild,  rank,  occupa- 
tion or  city  in  a  way  and  to  a  degree  of  which  we 
have    to-day  illustrations    only  in   the  dreams  of 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  I27 

socialists,  so,  even  more  strictly,  in  the  mediaeval 
spiritual  life.  In  fact,  it  was  the  training  in  the 
consciousness  of  solidarity,  given  from  cradle  to 
grave  by  the  Church,  that  alone  made  possible  the 
emphasis  placed  upon  corporate  life  in  the  civil 
estate. 

We  are,  at  length,  in  a  position  to  answer  our 
question  :  What  was  the  characteristic  force  in  the 
medisBval  Church  that  made  for  civilization,  leaving 
aside  for  the  moment  its  definite  spiritual  activities  I 
We  find  it  in  this  consciousness  of  solidarity.  This 
it  was,  as  we  shall  see  later,  that  was  the  strength  of 
the  papacy,  and  that  gave  to  the  greatest  of  mediaeval 
institutions,  Monasticism,  its  persistent  vitality.  But, 
in  reality,  this  principle  is  none  other  than  the 
translation  into  new  spiritual  terms  of  the  root 
principles  of  the  old  Eoman  Empire,  into  whose 
dominion  the  Church  had  stepped,  whose  genius  for 
administration  she  had  inherited,  whose  work  she 
was  destined  to  carry  on  to  still  higher  issues.  This 
consciousness  of  solidarity,  enforced  by  all  the  sanc- 
tions and  fears  of  another  world  of  which  he  was  ever 
reminded  that  he  was  already  a  part,  subdued  the 
individualism  of  the  barbarian,  with  its  vagaries  and 
divisions,  and  forced  him  slowly  to  adapt  himself  to 
the  needs,  limitations  and  service  of  a  society  with 
a  wider  outlook  than  the  clan  and  its  struggles. 
Through  the  same  consciousness  he  slowly  learned  to 
realize  both  what  he  owed  to  posterity  and  his  in- 
debtedness to  the  past.  As  we  might  naturally  ex- 
pect this  last  came  first.  The  intellectual  work  of 
the  Dark  Ages,  until  the  dawn  of  Scholasticism,  was 
the  laborious,  often  unintelligent  appropriation  of 


128      IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

the  patristic  and  classical  material  that  had  survived 
destruction. 

Furthermore  in  this  emphasis  of  solidarity  we  see 
the  force  which  prepared  the  new  races  to  receive  the 
inheritance  of  law  and  order  which  had  come  down 
to  them  from  Eome.  The  Church  by  its  great 
essential  ideas  made  ready  the  soil,  dug  about  the 
roots,  rendered  possible  in  different  ways  the  renewed 
vitality  of  the  withered  but  undying  principles  of 
Eoman  and  Hellenic  civilization.  The  secret  of 
civilization  is  growth  combined  with  continuity ; 
progress  is  never  the  result  of  cataclysm.  The 
Church  by  its  unity  of  organization  and  ritual,  as 
well  as  by  its  insistence  upon  one  common  language, 
not  only  supi^lied  the  element  of  continuity  with  older 
cultures,  but  added  the  stimulus  to  development  and 
growth.  It  took  the  disjecta  membra  of  its  antique 
and  patristic  heritages  and  by  a  synthesis  of  its  own 
gave  them  new  life  and  meaning. 

The  student  should  not  forget  that  the  emphasis 
laid  by  the  Church  upon  solidarity  was  not  material 
only  ;  it  demanded  from  all  the  apperception  of  cer- 
tain ideas.  The  gross  materialism  of  much  of  the 
corporate  life  of  the  mediaeval  Church  cannot  be 
denied ;  but  even  the  most  superstitious  devotee 
could  not  fail  to  be  conscious  at  sundry  times  and  in 
divers  ways  of  the  existence  of  a  great  spiritual  so- 
ciety the  bounds  of  which,  both  past  and  future, 
were  in  the  infinite  distances.  For  the  mediseval 
man,  glorious  saint  or  desperate  sinner  alike,  the  all 
important  aim  was  salvation,  though  the  sinner  often- 
times ventured  upon  a  mighty  gamble  in  futures, 
with  his  soul  as  the  stake.     By  many  differing  ways 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  129 

(superstitious  or  otherwise  need  not  now  detain  us), 
saint  and  sinner  alike  were  forced  to  realize  that  this 
salvation  depended  completely  ui^on  union  with  a 
Church  visible  and  invisible,  upon  forces  spiritual, 
far-reaching,  infinite,  that  transcended  the  little  circle 
of  his  immediate  sensations.  The  central  rite  of  his 
worship,  though  full  of  crude,  materialistic  interpreta- 
tions, nevertheless  ever  impressed  upon  him  that  the 
cardinal  fact  was  the  real  presence  of  Christ.  Even 
the  worship  of  the  saints,  harmful  as  it  may  have 
been  in  some  of  its  expressions,  linked  the  wor- 
shipper with  the  great  cloud  of  witnesses,  and  re- 
minded him  that  the  faith  of  the  present  had  its  roots 
In  the  historic  past.  The  solidarity  of  the  Church 
Triumphant  with  the  Church  Militant  was  more  than 
an  article  in  the  Creed ;  it  was  daily  brought  home 
to  the  believer  by  symbol,  usage  and  superstition. 
For  whatever  the  superstition  or  ignorance  of  the 
Middle  Ages — and  we  are  not  careful  to  minimize 
these  matters — underlying  all  we  may  find  the  pres- 
ence of  potent  ideas  that  drove  men  to  look  before 
and  after  to  realize  the  circles  beyond  circles  of  life 
and  thought,  past,  present  and  future,  that  were 
concerned  about  him,  and  of  which  his  life  formed  a 
part.  But  it  is  precisely  the  absence  of  such  ideas 
that  constitutes  barbarism — or  its  modern  equivalent, 
bourgeois  Philistinism — with  its  concentration  upon 
the  needs,  appetites  and  pleasures  of  the  moment ;  it 
is  the  presence  above  all  else  of  such  ideas  that  makes 
for  civilization  and  the  higher  life  of  the  soul,  in 
spite  of  all  imperfection  in  the  medium  in  which  the 
ideas  work. 
This  consciousness  of  solidarity,  so  fundamental  in 


I30     IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

the  mediaeval  Church,  was  of  immense  social  as  well 
as  spiritual  significance ;  it  took  the  disintegrated 
units  of  life  and  society  that  survived  the  barbarian 
invasions  and  built  them  up  into  a  new  order,  draw- 
ing strength  even  from  the  prevalent  decay.  By  its 
more  spiritual  conceptions,  above  all  by  the  homage 
which  in  the  worship  of  the  Crucified  it  ever  paid  to 
renunciation,  the  Church  slowly  broke  up  the  mili- 
tary ideas  of  feudalism,  and  for  brute  force  and  pas- 
sion substituted  law  and  order.  Its  doctrine  of  the 
unity  of  the  human  race,  both  in  Adam  and  in  Christ, 
was  destined  to  prove  fatal  to  all  serfdom  and  sla- 
very. Even  the  mediaeval  doctrine  of  sin,  strangely 
destitute  as  it  generally  proved  in  the  more  spiritual 
elements,  by  its  essentially  social  rather  than  indi- 
vidualistic outlook,  its  human  rather  than  Godward 
content,  became,  as  we  have  already  seen,  through 
the  social  sanctions  imposed,  a  powerful  instrument 
in  the  suppression  of  barbarian  tempers  and  customs. 

One  objection  to  this  generalization  is  so  obvious 
that  it  needs  to  be  met.  Neglecting  for  the  moment 
the  spiritual  forces,  we  have  emphasized  the  solidarity 
of  the  Catholic  Church  as  the  root  idea  which  gave 
her  power  to  tame  the  individualism  of  the  barbarian. 
But  historians  have  pointed  out  that  the  Eeformation 
was  the  protest  of  the  individual  against  an  organiza- 
tion which  gave  the  individual  as  such  little  or  no 
place.  How  then,  it  may  be  asked,  can  the  Eefor- 
mation be  looked  upon  as  a  factor  in  advancing  civ- 
ilization, when  it  appears  to  be  a  set-back  to  ideas 
from  which  humanity  had  been  emancipated  by  the 
mediaeval  Church  9 

The  answer  is  clear.     The  individualism  of  the 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  I3I 

Eeformation  was  not  the  individualism  of  the  bar- 
barian ;  it  was  an  individualism  of  thought,  not  of 
action.  Unregulated  individualism  in  action,  whether 
in  the  fifth-century  Vandal  or  the  twentieth- century 
manufacturer,  leads  to  inefficiency  and  anarchy  ;  in- 
dividualism in  thought,  however  ill  regulated,  makes 
for  liberty,  and  thus,  in  the  long  run,  for  righteous- 
ness. A  true  individualism  may  rightly  be  claimed 
to  be  the  highest  and  rarest  product  of  human  devel- 
opment, but  such  individualism  does  not  come  first 
in  the  order  of  time,  for  we  cannot  claim  to  discern 
its  roots  in  the  anarchic  selfishness  of  the  barbarian. 
In  the  historical  order  solidarity  comes  first,  alone 
making  possible  the  civilization  in  which  this  higher 
individualism — genius,  personal  magnetism,  leader- 
ship, lofty  thought,  the  artistes  touch,  the  poet's 
vision — call  it  what  we  will — shall  have  its  truest 
chance.  Moreover  the  historian  is  bound  to  confess 
that  a  true  development  of  individualism  is  so  rare 
and  difficult  that  society  is  ever  being  driven  back 
once  again  upon  the  principles  of  solidarity  to  supply 
the  necessary  correction.  In  the  great  crisis  through 
which  Europe  is  now  passing  we  see  the  exaggeration 
of  each  of  these  principles,  and  the  correction  in  both 
which  the  conflict  between  them  is  bound  to  produce, 
unless  indeed  the  world  shall  have  suflered  in  vain. 

Moreover,  the  protest  of  individualism  was  not  the 
only  feature  of  the  Eeformation.  Side  by  side  with 
it  we  see  the  revolt  of  nationalism,  the  determination 
of  the  Western  nations  to  work  out  their  own  life  on 
their  own  lines.  Not  without  cause  was  it  that  the 
Free  Cities  of  Germany,  almost  without  exception, 
embraced  the  Eeformation,   even  when  surrounded 


132      IDEALS  AND   ANTAGONISTIC   FORCES 

with  a  hostile  population,  as  in  the  case  of  Geneva 
and  the  Savoy.  But  nationalism  and  individualism 
necessarily  contain  contradictory  elements.  In  the 
play  of  these  two  principles— the  greater  opportunity 
of  the  individual  as  such,  the  expression  of  the 
necessary  solidarity  in  the  development  of  the  na- 
tional rather  than  in  the  insistence  upon  unity  of 
creed,  ritual  and  organization — united  only  in  their 
protest  against  the  common  tyranny  of  Eome,  we 
discern  the  cause  and  trace  the  varying  phases  of  the 
Eeformation.  But  to  this  phase  of  the  matter  we 
shall  return  again. 

IV 

We  have  reserved  for  our  conclusion  the  supreme 
instance  of  mediaeval  solidarity.  We  refer  to  the 
papacy,  with  its  twin  conception  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire.  For  the  unity  of  all  in  one  Catholic  Church 
under  one  head,  the  pope,  was  but  the  counterpart 
of  the  unity  of  all  in  one  Empire,  under  one  emperor. 
Of  both  unities  the  necessary  centre  was  Rome. 

The  student  who  would  investigate  the  part  that 
the  papacy  has  played  in  the  evolution  of  society 
should  realize  at  the  outset  that  the  medisBval  Church 
was  not  so  much  a  Church,  in  the  modern  sense  of 
the  word,  as  a  State.  '  ^  Convenience, "  writes  Pro- 
fessor Maitland,  ''  may  forbid  us  to  call  it  a  State 
very  often,  but  we  ought  to  do  so  from  time  to  time, 
for  we  could  frame  no  acceptable  definition  of  a  State 
which  would  not  comprehend  the  Church.  What 
has  it  not  that  the  State  should  have  ?  It  has  laws, 
lawgivers,  law  courts,  lawyers.  It  uses  physical 
force  to  compel  men  to  obey  its  laws.      It  keeps 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  I33 

prisons.  In  the  thirteenth  century,  though  with 
squeamish  phrases,  it  pronounces  sentence  of  death. 
It  is  no  voluntary  society.  If  people  attempt  to 
leave  it  they  are  guilty  of  the  crimen  Icesce  majestatis, 
and  are  likely  to  be  burnt.  It  is  supported  by  in- 
voluntary contributions,  by  tithe  and  tax.  That 
men  believe  it  to  have  a  supernatural  origin  does  not 
alter  the  case.  Kings  have  reigned  by  divine  right, 
and  republics  have  been  founded  in  the  name  of  God- 
given  liberty."^  But  the  constitution  of  this  State, 
as  developed  by  the  great  architect  of  the  papacy, 
Hildebrand,  was  unique  in  one  all-important  respect. 
The  Church  was  a  State  within  a  State,  or  rather  a 
State  within  which  all  other  states  existed,  a  State 
which  had  neither  boundaries  nor  limits  ;  which  ex- 
isted in,  was  part  of,  and  yet  distinct  from  every 
other  State,  over  the  which  in  fact  it  claimed  priority 
and  preeminence.  They  were  particular  and  indi- 
vidualistic J  the  Church  alone  was  Catholic  and  uni- 
versal, the  realization  in  life  of  the  principle  of 
solidarity. 

Herein  will  be  found  the  secret  both  of  the  growth 
and  downfall  of  the  papal  supremacy.  For  the  pa- 
pacy was  no  gigantic  upas  tree  of  fraud  and  super- 
stition reared  by  the  enemy  of  mankind,  but  a  nec- 
essary factor,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  in  the  evolution  of 
society.  But  as  is  invariably  the  case  in  history  this 
factor  was  no  isolated  force,  without  correlation  with 
the  past.  On  the  contrary  the  patriarchate  of  Eome 
became  the  supreme  power  in  the  mediaeval  world 
because  Western  Europe  had  been  cradled  in  the 
belief  of  the  necessity  of  one  world-power,  to  which 
*  Maitland,  *'  Canon  Law  in  Church  of  England,"  p.  100. 


134     IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

all  other  powers  should  give  adherence  and  form  a 
part.  To  this  legacy  of  the  Caesars  the  popes  became 
the  heirs.  The  city  of  Eome,  indeed,  had  fallen,  but 
in  popular  conception  its  former  power  still  con- 
tinued, though  expressing  itself  in  new  relations  of 
Christ  to  Eome  and  of  Rome  to  the  world.  "We  see 
this  new  relationship  clearly  brought  out  in  a  Norse 
poem,  written  somewhere  about  the  year  1000  A.  D. 
by  one  Eilif,  who  seems  to  have  been  hesitating  be- 
tween the  claims  of  Christian  and  Thor.  But  of 
Christ  he  writes : 

They  say  Christ  sits  upon  a  mountain  throne 
Far  to  the  south  beside  the  well  of  Fate  : 

So  closely  has  the  Lord  whom  angels  own 

With  Rome  and  Roman  lands  entwined  His  state. 

In  such  a  verse  as  this  we  see  the  forces  which  trans- 
ferred the  sanctity  and  majesty  of  the  imperial  city, 
as  also  of  the  ^' White  Christ,"  to  the  person  of  one 
whom  men  deemed  to  be  His  vicar.  Amid  the  chaos 
and  welter  of  the  great  upheaval  the  papacy  offered 
unity  of  administration  and  law,  and  won  the  grati- 
tude of  Europe  by  never  flinching  from  the  task  of 
beating  down  anarchy  into  order,  and  asserting  the 
supremacy  of  moral  ideas  over  brute  force.  The 
popes  prospered  because  they  stood  for  the  solidarity 
of  Europe  in  one  world-state,  whereas  the  Empire 
was  but  a  dream  with  occasional  breaks  of  reality. 

To  this  mediaeval  conception  of  the  solidarity  of 
Europe  in  one  world-state  historians  are  accustomed 
to  give  a  technical  title.  They  speak  of  it  as  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  This  concept  was  the  most 
important  contribution  which  the  Church  made  to 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  I35 

the  political  development  of  the  Middle  Ages.  As 
such  it  deserves  the  fullest  examinatiou  ;  without  the 
understanding  of  this  concept  the  Middle  Ages  are  a 
sealed  mystery. 

As  is  invariably  the  case  with  all  living  concepts 
this  idea  had  its  roots  in  the  historic  past.  This 
point,  to  which  we  have  already  alluded,  is  of  the 
highest  importance.  In  spite  of  her  sack  by  Alaric 
Eome  was  still  to  all  men  the  imperial  city  ;  the  idea 
of  her  empire  had  become  a  necessary  part  of  the 
world's  order.  The  traveller  might  tell  how  Eome 
lay  in  ruins,  with  a  population  reduced  to  less  than 
fifty  thousand,  with  a  trade  that  was  almost  limited 
to  dealing  in  relics,  but  men  never  doubted  that  her 
dominion  was  still  universal.  To  her  divinely  ap- 
pointed sway  there  could  be  neither  bounds  nor  bar- 
riers. In  her  alone  could  the  proud  prophecy  of  the 
poet  attain  reality —  » 

His  ego,  nee  metas  reram,  nee  tempora  pono, 
Imperium  sine  fine  dedi. 

The  mother  of  martyrs,  the  home  of  the  apostles,  the 
city  of  consuls  and  tribunes,  she  was  still  the  source 
of  all  power.  Though  a  widow,  she  was  none  the 
less  a  queen.  Her  barbaric  conquerors  might  beat 
down  her  walls  and  destroy  her  palaces,  yet  they 
bowed  before  the  memory  of  her  mighty  deed,  and 
were  not  unwilling  to  hold  their  countries  as  fiefs  of 
Eome.  As  the  successive  swarms  of  Goths,  Burgun- 
dians,  Lombards,  Franks  and  Teutons  swept  over 
Italy  and  Gaul,  they  one  and  all  sought  to  identify 
themselves  with  the  system  they  were  thoughtlessly 
destroying.     Not  one  of  them  dared  to  establish  his 


136      IDEALS  AND   ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

seat  in  the  ancient  capital,  or  inhabit  the  palace  of 
the  Caesars ;  they  asked  and  received  the  consular 
office,  and  reigned  as  the  titular  vicars  of  the  em- 
peror at  Constantinople.  Even  the  greatest  of  the 
barbarians,  Theodoric  the  Ostrogoth,  ruled  from  his 
palace  at  Verona  as  the  nominal  lieutenant  of  Justin- 
ian. In  the  Sagas  he  is  known  merely  as  Dietrich  of 
Bern — no  higher  title  could  be  his.  The  instincts  of 
man  went  deeper  than  historical  fact.  The  Empire 
had  not  ceased  ;  by  the  nature  of  things  that  was  im- 
possible. Her  foundations  were  the  immutable  de- 
crees of  God  ;  she  could  not  die,  nor  could  the  sceptre 
depart  from  between  her  feet.  So  when  on  Christ- 
mas Day  800,  as  Charles  the  Frank  was  hearing  mass 
in  the  Basilica  of  St.  Peter,  the  reading  of  the  Gospel 
ended,  the  pope,  Leo  III,  rose  from  his  chair,  and, 
crossing  over  to  where  Charles  knelt  in  prayer  at  the 
high  altar,  placed  on  his  brow  the  diadem  of  the 
Caesars,  barbarians  and  Komans  alike  felt  that  the 
dream  of  years  was  accomplished.  The  Eternal  City 
had  risen  from  her  long  sleep  to  enter  upon  a  new 
era  of  life  and  power. 

The  Eoman  Empire  which  Charles  the  Great  and 
Leo  thus  restored  was  another  empire,  and  yet  not 
another.  It  was  not  another,  in  that  it  was  the  heir  to 
such  assets  as  survived  of  the  old  empire  of  the  Caesars ; 
inheriting,  though  with  sadly  diminished  strength, 
its  traditions  of  supremacy,  the  majesty  of  its  laws, 
its  elaborate  system  of  municipal  government,  and  its 
unrivalled  powers  of  organization.  It  was  not  an- 
other, in  that  there  was  supposed  to  be  no  break  of 
continuity.  For  four  hundred  years  the  legal  head 
of  the  world  had  resided  at  Constantinople  ;  now  the 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  I37 

throne  was  vacant,  for  the  Empress  Irene  had  deposed 
and  blinded  her  son,  Constantine  YI,  and  ascended 
the  throne  herself.  But  by  what  right,  it  was  asked, 
did  a  woman  grasp  the  sceptre  of  the  Csesars? 
Surely,  also,  elections  at  Eome  were  as  valid  as  those 
at  Constantinople  :  the  daughter-city  was  not  above 
her  mother.  So  the  act  of  Constantine  the  Great  was 
reversed,  and  Old  Eome  once  more  assumed  to  her- 
self the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  headship.  Charles 
the  Great  was  proclaimed  as  the  legitimate  successor, 
not  merely  of  the  extinct  line  of  the  West,  but  of 
Justinian,  Arcadius,  and  the  emperors  of  the  East. 
He  is,  said  men,  in  the  abundant  controversial 
literature  which  at  a  later  date  the  West  poured  forth 
in  justification  of  its  conduct,  the  sixty-eighth  in 
direct  descent  from  Augustus ;  the  Eoman  Empire 
is  one  and  indivisible  and  has  once  again  been 
*'  translated  back  ^'  to  its  earliest  seat  of  authority. 

The  old  order  thus  passed  away,  giving  place  to 
new  aims  and  larger  hopes.  The  former  empire  had 
been  founded  on  paganism.  But  with  the  conversion 
of  Constantine  there  had  come  a  change  in  more  than 
the  official  professions  of  religion.  All  her  civiliza- 
tion, perfectly  developed  after  its  kind,  from  its 
original  Italic  or  Hellenic  sources,  had  been  de- 
liberately renounced  for  new  forms  that  to  a  Julian, 
blinded  by  the  glamour  of  the  past,  seemed  retro- 
grade, incomplete  and  ugly.  The  pagan  city  of  the 
ancients  with  its  literature,  art  and  methods  was 
buried  ;  new  Eome  had  risen  from  the  catacombs. 
Christianity  was  alike  its  bulwark  and  its  basis. 
From  the  days  of  Constantine  onward  the  Church  and 
the  State  were  but  two  names  for  the  same  thing. 


138     IDEALS  AND  ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

The  limits  of  both  were  determined  by  the  same 
causes ;  on  the  one  side  the  ability  of  the  State  to 
conserve  its  frontiers,  on  the  other  by  the  power  of 
the  Cross  to  subdue  the  barbarians.  In  the  older 
Eoman  Empire  also  the  two  issues  had  tended  to  be- 
come one.  From  the  days  of  Augustus  onward  the 
secret  of  imperial  unity  lay  in  the  development  of  a 
common  religion  which  was  but  the  State  under  a 
religious  form.  In  the  first  century  this  had  taken 
the  form  of  the  worship  of  Eome  and  Augustus,  the 
beginning  of  a  universal  church  with  a  priesthood, 
sacrifices,  and  temples  of  its  own,  in  conception  and 
aim  very  similar  and  yet  very  different  from  the 
Catholic  Church  with  which  it  was  destined  to  come 
into  conflict.  But  such  as  it  was  the  worship  of 
Bome  and  Augustus  undoubtedly  supplied  something 
which  the  local  polytheism  has  failed  to  give,  a 
common  religious  link  holding  together  the  in- 
numerable races  and  creeds  of  a  dominion  that 
stretched  from  the  Irish  Sea  to  the  Euphrates.  To 
the  ancient  world,  as  in  the  East  to  this  day,  a 
common  religion  was  the  basis  of  all  nationalism. 
The  conversion  of  Constantine  was  not  therefore  the 
introduction  of  a  new  principle,  only  a  change  in  the 
content  of  ideas — the  unity  of  the  race  no  longer 
symbolized  by  the  worship  of  a  Tiberius  or  Marcus 
Aurelius,  but  by  the  profession  of  one  Lord,  one 
faith,  one  baptism,  with  one  Church,  one  creed,  and 
one  pope. 

^  Hitherto  we  have  dealt  with  the  rise  of  the  papacy 
as  the  expression  of  solidarity,  the  head  of  a  world- 
state,  the  heir  of  the  Empire  in  its  universalism  and 
claims.     We  have  noted  the  benefits  which  Europe 


OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  I39 

obtained,  the  gain  to  civilization  which  the  world- 
state  brought.  But  there  came  a  time  when  this 
conception  of  the  Church  as  a  world-state,  forming  a 
part  of,  and  yet  embracing  and  containing  every 
other  state,  became  the  weakness  of  the  Church 
instead  of  as  hitherto  its  strength.  The  virtual 
downfall  of  the  papacy  at  the  beginning  of  the 
fourteenth  century  was  due  to  this  cause.  Men  did 
not  throw  over  the  yoke  of  Boniface  YIII  at  the 
commencement  of  the  fourteenth  century  because 
they  had  ceased  to  believe  in  the  pope's  spiritual 
pretensions,  or  would  not  acknowledge  his  infalli- 
bility in  matters  of  the  soul  but  because  they  con- 
ceived that  such  spiritual  supremacy  did  not  involve 
secular  supremacy  as  well.  The  Eeformation,  also, 
in  its  beginnings  was  political  even  more  than 
religious  ;  social  rather  than  moral ;  a  protest  against 
an  all- centralized  yet  omnipresent  world-power,  in 
theory  spiritual,  in  practice  secular,  which  had  out- 
lived the  conditions  of  its  birth.  The  imperial  idea, 
which  originated  in  Greece — the  mother  of  all  ideals 
— with  Alexander,  but  was  completed  in  Italy  by  the 
Csesars,  was  at  last  exhausted.  World-wide  admin- 
istrative centralization,  whether  secular  or  spiritual, 
had  ceased  to  be  the  ideal.  The  building  up  of  the 
nation  had  begun  to  be  revealed  as  the  goal  of 
history,  at  any  rate  so  far  as  the  next  three  centuries 
were  concerned.  But  to  one  who  writes  amid  the 
welter  of  a  war  that  has  arisen  from  the  extravagant 
ambitions  of  uncontrolled  nationalism  the  question 
presents  itself  whether  nationalism  and  individualism 
alike  must  not  find  salvation  by  adopting,  in  a 
changed    and    purified    form,    the    conceptions    of 


I40     IDEALS  AND   ANTAGONISTIC  FORCES 

solidarity  and  authority  which  gave  the  papacy  its 
moral  influence  in  days  still  darker  even  than  the 
present.  But  such  solidarity  must  not  be  the  welt- 
macht  of  imperialism,  but  the  constraint  of  a  common 
law  and  a  common  conscience,  and  the  authority 
and  sanctions  of  a  common  judgment  of  united 
civilization.  For  the  bringing  in  of  this  new  and 
higher  solidarity  we  look  with  hope  to  the  United 
States  of  America,  at  whatever  cost,  to  be  in  the  van. 
The  New  World  will  then  have  redressed  the  balance 
of  the  Old. 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  DAWNING  OF  THE  MOD- 
ERN SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  DAWNING  OF  THE  MODERN 
SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 


A  BRIEF  survey  of  our  Argument  may  not  be 
inopportune.  In  our  first  lecture  we  sur- 
veyed the  task  whicli  lay  before  the  Church 
in  the  reconstruction  of  a  ruined  world.  In  a  second 
lecture  we  noted  the  heroic  enterprises  whereby  the 
barbarians  were  won  for  the  faith.  In  our  last  lec- 
ture we  attempted  to  answer  the  question  as  to  the 
real  inwardness  and  content  of  mediaeval  life  and  ideal 
in  relation  to  the  Church.  We  emphasized  the  con- 
ception of  solidarity  as  opposed  to  the  individualism 
of  barbarism,  and  especially  noted  its  supreme  ex- 
pression in  the  papacy  and  the  Holy  Roman  Empire. 
In  our  present  lecture  we  propose  to  pass  from  ab- 
stract generalizations  and  to  examine  in  broad  outline 
the  Church's  contribution  to  the  social  and  ethical 
development  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

In  any  survey  of  the  civilizing  work  of  the  medi- 
seval  Church  we  may  claim  the  value  assigned  to 
human  life  as  the  result  of  the  doctrine  of  the  sanctity 
of  every  immortal  soul ;  the  mitigation  of  the  horrors 
of  war  ;  the  impulse  given  to  the  manumission  of 
slaves  and  serfs.     The  mediaeval  Church  provided 

143 


144  THE  DAWNING  OF 

the  one  power  that  could  successfully  oppose  the 
reign  of  force,  that  could  uphold  and  maintain  dis- 
cipline over  the  passions  of  the  greatest.  To  the 
Church  also  we  owe  the  formation  of  a  loftier  ideal  of 
womanhood,  the  beginnings  of  education,  the  resur- 
rection of  art,  the  noblest  achievements  of  archi- 
tecture. Art,  it  is  true,  soon  left  the  service  of  the 
Church  to  serve  pagan  masters ;  Fra  Angelico  with 
his  angels  all  blue  and  gold  gave  place  to  painters 
with  more  sensuous  forms.  But  architecture  in  me- 
diaeval times  still  remained  the  true  child  of  the 
Church,  the  interpreter  in  symbols  of  stone  and  form 
of  her  mystic  teaching.  Again  in  the  coming  of  the 
friars,  to  a  lesser  extent  also  in  the  earlier  monas- 
tic movement,  we  note  the  most  successful  effort  ever 
made  towards  constructive  socialism.  While  hostile 
to  the  liberty  of  thought  the  Church  in  her  official 
teachings  yet  demanded  a  certain  measure  of  political 
liberty,  and  thus  ministered  to  the  growth  of  democ- 
racy. Lastly  none  may  deny  the  superabounding 
charity  of  the  Church.  Harmful  as  may  have  been 
the  extravagancies  of  this  charity,  none  can  deny,  in 
the  absence  of  wiser  and  more  organized  efforts  to 
deal  with  poverty,  that  it  was  the  charity  of  the 
Church  alone  that  saved  the  poorest  from  the  grind- 
ing tyranny  of  the  powerful  and  wealthy.  Many  of 
these  matters  are  so  self-evident  that  they  need  not 
detain  us.     Others  will  demand  fuller  explication. 

The  emphasis  of  the  greater  value  of  human  life  is 
observed  in  the  formation  of  public  opinion  against 
the  common  sins  of  the  Roman  Empire,  abortion  and 
infanticide ;  and  in  the  growth  during  the  Middle 
Ages  of  foundling  hospitals.    That  this  last  move- 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      145 

ment  became  in  time  a  source  of  danger  to  chastity- 
must  not  blind  us  to  its  value  as  its  first  origin  in 
teaching  charity  and  humanity.  As  regards  infanti- 
cide, the  Church  from  the  first  refused  to  recognize 
the  old  patria  potestaSj  the  right  of  the  father  to  de- 
cide which  of  his  children  should  be  allowed  to  live, 
and  which  should  be  cast  into  the  street  or  exposed 
on  the  island  in  the  Tiber.  ''If  it  proves  a  girl, '^ 
writes  a  father  in  Alexandria  to  his  expectant  wife, 
as  we  read  in  recently  found  papyri,  "  throw  it  out.'^ 
The  enthronement  of  the  Babe  of  Bethlehem— the 
Madonna  and  Child — was  the  destruction  of  the  sanc- 
tion of  such  crimes.  Nor  should  we  overlook,  as 
instance  of  the  great  law  of  compensation  that  runs 
through  all  history,  that  the  compassion  of  the  Church 
for  infants  was  largely  the  result  of  its  extreme 
doctrine  of  Baptism.  The  hell  which  in  common 
belief  awaited  the  unbaptized  led  the  Church  to  insist 
on  the  saving  of  life.  But  from  the  serfdom  or  slavery 
into  which  the  children  thus  saved  were  too  often  sold 
the  mediaeval  Church  only  slowly  effected  deliverance. 
From  the  credit  due  to  the  Church  on  this  matter 
of  the  greater  value  attached  to  life,  the  crown  of 
which  was  the  abolition  of  the  gladiatorial  shows, 
one  deduction,  though  alas  !  a  most  serious  one,  must 
be  made.  The  Church  in  the  Middle  Ages  did  little 
or  nothing  to  mitigate  the  barbarity  of  the  penal 
code.  This  is  the  more  remarkable  when  we  re- 
member that  the  early  Church  excluded  its  members 
from  holding  office  in  the  State  because  their  judicial 
duties  could  not  be  carried  out,  as  Tertullian  claims, 
*' without  chaining  and  torturing."  Unfortunately 
the  persecuting  zeal  of  the  intolerant  led  not  only  to 


146  THE  DAWNING  OF 

the  abandonment  of  this  early  spirit,  but,  in  the  later 
Middle  Ages,  to  a  decided  retrogression.  In  1252 
Innocent  IV,  reversing  the  previous  teaching  of  the 
Church,  made  torture  legal  for  the  hunting  of 
heretics,  and  forced  its  use  on  the  secular  courts. 
Not  the  least  of  the  many  crimes  of  the  medioBval 
Inquisition,  the  most  abiding  in  its  results  was  the 
way  in  which  she  thus  poisoned  the  administration 
of  justice  and  the  methods  of  evidence.  Henceforth 
on  the  Continent  a  prisoner  was  held  to  be  guilty 
until  he  could  prove  his  innocence.  Moreover,  every 
species  of  deceit  was  justified,  if  profitable  for 
conviction.  Innocent  III  emphatically  stated  that 
^^  faith  is  not  to  be  kept  with  him  who  keeps  not 
faith  with  God."  No  trick  was  too  base,  no  false- 
hood too  false,  no  evidence  too  tainted,  if  only 
thereby  confession  could  be  wrung  from  the  ac- 
cused, or  the  denunciation  secured  of  others.  The 
secular  courts  soon  learned  to  follow  the  Church's 
example.  To  this  sin  against  justice  and  civiliza- 
tion the  Inquisition  added  studied  hypocrisy  and 
systematic  self-deceit.  By  her  own  law  torture  could 
only  be  administered  once  ;  her  agents  tricked  the 
canous  by  the  device  of  successive  adjournments. 
When  at  last  relentless  cruelty  had  extorted  con- 
fession, the  mangled  victim  was  carried  into  another 
room,  his  ravings  read  aloud,  the  oath  administered, 
and  careful  record  entered  that  "  the  confession  was 
free  and  spontaneous,  made  without  the  pressure  of 
force  or  fear."  On  handing  over  the  *^  relaxed  "  to 
secular  judgment,  the  Inquisition,  to  avoid  '^  coarse 
talk  of  flames  and  faggots,"  solemnly  admonished  the 
authorities  that  punishment  should  not  imperil  life 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      I47 

or  limb,  or  cause  effusion  of  blood,  though  woe  to 
the  secular  prince  that  took  the  Inquisition  at  her 
word.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  Inquisition  wrapped 
herself  round  with  deceit  and  fear  ;  to-day  she  stands 
self-revealed  in  all  the  horrors  of  a  system  whose 
cruelty  pagan  tyrants  may  have  surpassed,  but 
whose  resources  of  hypocrisy  and  deceit  they  would 
have  envied  in  vain. 

In  this  matter  of  the  mediaeval  Inquisition  it  may 
be  well  to  point  out  that  the  mediaeval  Chui-ch  con- 
tributed almost  nothing  to  the  idea  of  toleration. 
The  great  mediaeval  thinker — Marsiglio  ^  of  Padua — 
the  inspirer  of  Ockham  and  Wyclif  did  indeed  claim 
that  heresy  must  be  unpunished  in  this  world,  ex- 
cept in  so  far  as  it  may  prove  dangerous  to  society. 
Even  in  this  case  the  punishment  should  only  be  in- 
flicted by  civil  courts.  Errors  of  opinion,  ^'howso- 
ever great  they  be, "  must  on  no  account  be  punished. 
Of  these  Jesus  is  the  judge  in  a  world  to  come,  the 
reality  of  whose  terrors  it  is  the  business  of  the 
priests  to  uphold  before  offenders.  But  Marsiglio 
apart, — and  Marsiglio  was  condemned  as  a  hopeless 
heretic — we  may  fairly  claim  that  toleration  is  es- 
sentially a  modern  notion,  repugnant  both  to  the 
statecraft  and  piety  of  preceding  centuries.  To  the 
Church  of  those  days,  for  that  matter  to  all  Churches 
until  Oliver  Cromwell  pointed  the  way  to  better 
things,  toleration  was  a  crime  against  God  and  truth. 
In  the  Eoman  Empire,  as  we  have  already  noted, 
toleration  of  a  sort  existed,  in  reality  indifference 
due  to  political  expediency.  A  wise  recognition  of 
local  usages  and  cults  was  desirable,  provided  always 
^  For  Marsiglio  see  infra^  p.  174- 


148  THE  DAWNING  OF 

that  tlie  interests  of  the  State  were  duly  conserved ; 
a  toleration  founded  upon  the  claims  of  conscience 
and  the  rights  of  the  individual  soul  was  a  matter  too 
absurd  for  philosophers  even  to  discuss.  The  perse- 
cution of  Christianity  was  political,  the  result  of  the 
antagonism  of  rival  claims/  We  may  even  claim 
that  Christianity  was  persecuted  because  of  her  in- 
tolerance of  heathenism.  If,  like  the  rival  cult  of 
Mithi'aism,  she  had  been  content  to  live  and  let  live, 
to  bow  the  knee  in  the  house  of  Rimmon,  she  would 
not  have  drawn  down  upon  herself  the  wrath  of 
Eoman  governors.  The  Church  suffered  because  of 
her  necessary  aggressiveness  of  temper.  We  could 
not  have  wished  it  otherwise.  An  unaggressive 
Christianity  would  never  have  conquered  the  Em- 
pire. 

Unfortunately  when  Christianity  became  the  re- 
ligion of  the  State  the  aggressiveness  of  temper  was 
turned  inward.  As  theological  strife,  especially  the 
Arian  and  later  the  Donatist  controversies  grew  more 
bitter,  Christianity  forgot,  if  indeed  she  had  ever 
learned,  the  incongruity  between  persecution  and  the 
Gospel.  Moreover  Christianity  had  now  become  the 
religion  of  the  Empire  and  in  an  imperial  Church 
there  could  be  no  right  of  the  sects  to  separate  exist- 
ence. That  was  deemed  to  be  as  impossible  as  the 
right  of  nations  to  be  independent  kingdoms.  The 
world-power,  secular  or  spiritual,  must  crush  all  re- 
volt. To  its  credit  be  it  said,  the  Latin  Church  was 
somewhat  backward  in  actual  persecution  ;  she  lacked 
alike  the  passions  and  heresies  of  the  East.     In  the 

^On  this  whole  matter  I  may  refer  to  my  work  "Persecution 
in  the  Early  Church." 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      I49 

profound  stupor  of  the  Dark  Ages  the  persecuting 
spirit  died  out.  Orthodoxy  and  heresy  were  stag- 
nant ;  the  West  was  too  absorbed  in  her  struggle  for 
existence.  The  few  who  disturbed  the  Church  with 
their  deeper  questionings — Felix  of  Urgel  with  his 
Adoptionism  (794),  and  the  monk  Gottschalk  (+869) 
with  his  doctrine  of  predestination — were  not  severely 
treated.  But  in  the  eleventh  century  conscience  and 
reason  awoke  from  their  long  sleep  and  began  to  rend 
the  unity  of  the  Church.  At  first  the  Church  was 
slow  to  resort  to  extremities.  Some  burnings  there 
were  but  they  were  in  all  cases  the  result  of  lynch 
law  and  popular  fanaticism.  But  the  growth  of 
heresy,  especially  the  dangerous  anti-social  heresy 
of  the  Cathari  or  Albigensians  in  Southern  France 
and  Northern  Italy,  compelled  the  Church  to  resort 
to  her  older  weapons.  Council  after  council  urged 
the  bishops  to  stamp  out  error  by  using  their  powers 
of  parochial  inquisition.  But  such  inquisition  was 
local  and  uncertain.  So  Innocent  III  determined  to 
deliver  it  from  the  whims  and  irregularities  of  the 
prelates  and  hand  it  over  to  the  greater  zeal  and  cer- 
tainty of  the  Roman  Curia.  Hence  the  centraliza- 
tion of  persecution  by  the  establishment  of  the  papal 
Inquisition  under  the  guidance,  as  a  rule,  of  trained 
friars. 

To  the  twentieth  century  the  Inquisition  is  the  in- 
carnation of  spiritual  despotism.  Even  the  impar- 
tial historian  finds  a  difficulty  in  so  detaching  him- 
self from  current  ideas  as  to  deal  fairly  with  this  ter- 
rible blot  on  the  record  of  the  mediaeval  church. 
Nevertheless  we  should  endeavour  to  estimate  the 
Inquisition  from  the  standpoint  of  the  age  in  which 


I50  THE  DAWNING  OF 

it  was  established.  To  the  people  at  large,  heresy- 
was  the  greatest  of  all  crimes  because  the  most  dan- 
gerous. We  must  ouce  again  remember  the  excess- 
ive mediaeval  conception  of  solidarity,  the  convic- 
tion that  the  unity  of  the  State  rested  on  the  unity  of 
faith.  Heresy  was  no  mere  matter  of  individual 
opinion  ;  on  the  contrary  the  heretic  perished  not 
alone  in  his  iniquity.  To  the  mediaeval  thinker,  in- 
dividualism in  thought  or  religion  was  a  thing  im- 
possible ;  for  religion  and  thought  were  both  ques- 
tions of  society.  In  the  maintenance  of  uniformity 
men  found  the  basis  and  bond  of  continued  social 
existence.  Whatever  therefore  tended  to  destroy 
this  unity  of  uniformity — the  two  terms  were  re- 
garded as  identical — was  as  much  a  hurt  to  the  State 
as  the  work  of  thief  or  coiner.  These  exalted  indi- 
vidualism into  the  license  for  crime ;  the  heretic 
turned  it  into  a  lever  for  overthrowing  society  itself. 
So  the  Church  must  take  care  that  charity  work  not 
evil  to  others.  Caiaphas  was  the  prophet  of  medi- 
aeval intolerance ;  it  was  expedient  that  one  man 
should  die  than  that  the  fires  of  heaven  should  over- 
whelm both  city  and  nation.  Better  still  if  the  rack 
and  stake  could  not  only  avert  the  vials  of  wrath, 
but  save  the  soul  of  the  sinner.  For  the  horrors  of 
hell  were  ever  before  the  eyes  of  all,  a  hell  where  in- 
fauts  not  a  span  long  writhed  in  eternal  flames  while 
the  blessed  in  heaven  found  satisfaction  in  contem- 
plating the  miseries  of  the  damned.  All  human  in- 
terests therefore  sank  into  nothingness  in  comparison 
with  the  duty  of  keeping  the  flock  from  straying,  or 
of  preventing  an  infected  sheep  from  communicating 
his  poison  to  his  fellows.     To  hew  Agag  in  pieces 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      151 

was  the  call  of  God  ;  to  neglect  was  the  ruin  of  peo- 
ple and  kiug.  Dominic,  St.  Francis,  St.  Louis, 
Thomas  Aquinas,  and  Innocent  III,  were  types  of 
men  of  whom  in  their  several  ways  humanity  in  any 
age  might  well  feel  proud,  and  yet  where  heresy 
was  concerned  they  were  ruthless.  Said  St.  Louis, 
''Clerks  may  dispute,  but  the  layman  who  hears  the 
Christian  faith  spoken  against  ought  to  defend  it 
only  with  his  sword,  which  he  should  drive  home 
into  the  gainsayer."  Heretics,  claims  Thomas  Aqui- 
nas, must  not  be  endured.  The  tenderness  of  the 
Church  allows  them  to  have  two  warnings  ;  after 
which  they  must  be  abandoned  to  the  secular  power. 
This,  he  argues,  shows  the  mercy  of  the  Church,  for 
it  is  much  more  wicked  to  corrupt  the  faith  on  which 
depends  the  life  of  the  same  than  to  debase  the  coin- 
age which  provides  merely  for  temporal  life.  Where- 
fore if  coiners  are  doomed  at  once  to  death,  much 
more  might  heretics  be  slain  as  soon  as  they  are  con- 
victed. 

The  crime  of  the  Inquisition,  therefore,  doe§  not 
consist  in  a  new  departure  of  intolerance  and  cruelty, 
nor  in  its  outrage  of  popular  conviction.  Its  punish- 
ments were  merciful  in  comparison  with  those  which 
uutil  recently  disgraced  the  secular  codes,  while  in 
theory  its  procedure  was  hedged  round  with  safe- 
guards of  justice.  Nevertheless,  when  every  excuse 
has  been  made  that  fairness  or  leniency  may  demand, 
when  too  the  number  of  victims  has  been  reduced 
from  popular  exaggerations  to  the  more  merciful 
actualities,  the  Inquisition  will  forever  stand  out  as 
a  great  retrograde  step  in  the  civilizing  mission  of  the 
Church.     We  blame  it  not  that  in  the  days  of  its 


152  THE  DAWNING  OF 

origin  it  failed  to  rise  superior  to  the  moral  con- 
sciousness of  Europe.  Its  damnation  lies  in  its 
stereotyping  of  all  that  was  most  evil  in  popular 
passion,  in  its  fatal  crippling  of  development,  in  its 
smothering  of  aspiration,  and  in  the  deterioration  it 
induced  of  all  the  higher  aspects  of  life.  Its  gigantic 
structure  overshadowed  Christendom,  terrorizing 
laity  and  clergy  alike.  Her  officers  were  irrespon- 
sible save  to  the  pope ;  they  could  judge  all  yet  be 
judged  by  none.  Even  its  familiars,  bravoes  and 
spies  were  shielded  with  inviolability.  From  its 
unceasing  vigilance  no  heretic  could  hope  for  es- 
cape J  a  long  arm  reached  across  the  seas ;  a  sleep- 
less memory  treasured  up  the  records  of  any  heret- 
ical family  for  generations  ;  kindly  death  brought  no 
release.  Half  a  century  might  have  elapsed  since 
the  heretic's  decease  in  the  full  odour  of  sanctity,^ 
but  the  sleuth-hounds  of  Eome  will  at  last  trace  out 
his  crime,  burn  his  bones,  confiscate  the  property  of 
his  grandchildren,  raze  his  honour  to  the  ground, 
and  dedicate  it  forever  as  a  public  receptacle  of  filth. 
Her  net  was  everywhere,  and  no  prey  so  small  that 
it  could  elude  her  meshes.  She  entered  into  the 
home,  breaking  up  the  peace  of  families,  holding  out 
rewards  to  the  father  who  should  betray  his  son,  to 
the  wife  that  would  denounce  her  husband.  In  one 
case  a  lad  of  ten  was  allowed  to  incriminate  his 
father,  his  sister,  and  seventy  others ;  while  the 
wretch  denounced  by  the  bigotry  or  malice  of  her 
spies  knew  neither  the  names  nor  the  evidence  of  the 
witnesses  against  him.     Suspicion  was  accepted  as 

^  See  the  remarkable  story  of  Armann  Pongilnps  in  Lea,  "  In- 
quisitions," Vol.  II,  pp.  240-242. 


THE   MODERN   SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      153 

proof,  aud  every  doubtful  point  decided  in  favour  of 
the  faith.  To  defend  a  heretic  was  itself  heresy.  As 
Sir  John  Fortescue,  the  Chancellor  of  Henry  VI,  de- 
clared the  system  placed  every  man's  life  in  the 
hands  of  his  enemy.  As  no  heretic  could  convey  a 
legal  title,  or  contract  a  debt,  all  alienations  subse- 
quent to  his  heresy  were  void  and  fell  without  re- 
dress to  the  State,  no  matter  through  how  many 
hands  the  property  might  have  passed.  Where  the 
Inquisition  flourished,  as  in  Spain  and  in  the  regions 
of  the  Southern  Cross  that  lay  under  her  domination, 
industry  and  commerce  were  of  necessity  paralyzed, 
social  intercourse  threatened,  the  home  destroyed. 
But  in  dealing  with  the  Church's  task  in  the  Middle 
Ages  we  must  not  forget  that,  historically  speaking, 
the  Inquisition  was  characteristic  rather  of  the  later 
years  of  the  Middle  Ages  than  of  an  earlier  age  when 
the  Church  wielded  her  maximum  power. 

II 

As  regards  slavery  the  progress  made  in  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  was  somewhat  slow.  We  must  remember 
that  the  Church  did  not  at  first  recognize  the  great- 
ness of  St.  Paul's  Epistle  to  Fhilemon^  that  no  slave 
question  existed  in  the  early  Church,  and  that  the 
legitimacy  of  slavery  was  generally  acknowledged  in 
theory.^  But  in  practice,  the  doctrine  of  the  value 
of  *'  the  brother  for  whom  Christ  died  "  slowly  tri- 
umphed. The  freedom  of  serf  or  slave  in  testa- 
mentary bequest  was  inculcated  as  the  most  accept- 
able gift  that  could  be  made  '^for  the  benefit  of  the 

*  On  this  matter  the  author  may  refer  to  his  "Persecution  in 
the  Early  Church,"  pp.  149-152. 


154  THE   DAWNING  OF 

soul. "  In  Europe,  by  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury, slavery  of  Christian  people  was  almost  un- 
known, though  the  slavery  of  non-Christian  people, 
if  thereby  they  secured  baptism,  was  looked  upon  as 
almost  a  charity — temporary  labour  as  the  price  of 
their  soul's  deliverance  from  eternal  torment.  Serf- 
dom, on  the  contrary,  lingered  long — in  Eussia  until 
times  within  the  memory  of  those  still  living.  Its 
abolition  was  hindered  by  the  great  number  of  serfs 
attached  to  the  estates  of  the  Church,  especially  to  its 
greater  monasteries.  Many  of  these,  no  doubt,  orig- 
inally were  free  peasants  who  had  bartered  their  lib- 
erty for  the  greater  security  and  protection  which  the 
spiritual  overlord  could  afford.  Like  many  other 
movements  commendable  in  their  origin  this,  in 
time,  became  a  disaster  both  for  civilization  and  the 
Church.  The  serfs  of  the  Church  were  among  the 
last  to  secure  their  liberty  just  as  the  towns  which 
grew  up  under  the  shadow  of  the  great  monasteries — 
for  instance  Bury  St.  Edmund's  or  St.  Albans — were 
the  last  to  secure  their  municipal  freedom.  The 
Crusades  also,  which  largely  assisted  in  the  emanci- 
pation of  the  ordinary  serf,  did  nothing  for  the  serf 
of  the  Church.  Needy  barons,  equipping  their  re- 
tainers for  the  East,  were  glad  to  obtain  money  by 
selling  the  people  rights  and  privileges  hitherto  with- 
held. But  the  Church  remained  at  home  and  loos- 
ened not  her  purse-strings.  But  it  is  fair  to  remem- 
ber that  in  its  practical  working  mediaeval  serfdom 
was  not  quite  so  evil  as  it  seems  to  us  to-day.  We 
may  well  doubt  whether  a  landless  peasantry,  though 
nominally  free,  is  in  reality  much  better  off  than  the 
mediaeval  villain  whose  land  was  secured  to  him  by 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      155 

custom  or  copyhold.  We  may  add,  in  passing,  that 
one  of  the  most  evil  effects  of  the  peasant  being  tied 
to  the  soil  was  its  effect  upon  the  position  of  woman. 
Leaving  out  altogether  such  a  hideous  abuse  of  serf- 
dom as  the  law  of  the  first  night — claimed  in  Prussia 
as  late  as  the  middle  of  the  last  century — the  woman 
who  lost  her  husband  mast  find  another  almost  at 
once,  or  else  lose  hearth  and  home.  The  whole  sys- 
tem left  no  place  for  the  growth  of  finer  feelings. 
But  in  this  matter  mediceval  serfdom  is  by  no  means 
the  greatest  sinner — there  are  worse  still  existing 
among  us. 

Closely  connected  with  the  abolition  of  slavery 
was  the  constant  effort  of  the  Church,  throughout 
the  Middle  Ages,  to  redeem  Christian  captives  from 
bondage.  This  movement  had  been  begun  in  the 
days  of  persecution  ;  one  of  the  objects  of  the  monthly 
collection  allowed  by  Eoman  Law  in  the  churches, 
as  in  all  other  recognized  guilds,  was  the  redemption 
of  brethren  banished  to  the  mines  of  Sardinia.  With 
the  barbarian  invasions  such  a  fund  became  still 
more  necessary  ;  and  the  leaders  of  the  Church,  St. 
Ambrose,  St.  Augustine,  and  others,  distinguished 
themselves  by  their  efforts  in  this  matter.  Csesarius 
of  Aries  (+542)  was  not  the  only  bishop  of  his  times 
who  sold  the  gold  and  silver  ornaments  of  his  church 
to  purchase  back  the  captives  of  his  flock.  When 
money  failed,  Eligius  of  Noyon  (b.  588),  in  his  con- 
stant work  of  manumission,  sold  even  his  clothing. 
The  Muslim  conquests  and  the  terror  of  the  Algerine 
pirates  led  the  Middle  Ages  to  found  societies 
specially  devoted  to  this  object,  the  chief  of  which 
was  that  of  the  Trinitarians  or  Maturines.     But  in 


156  THE  DAWNING  OF 

all  such  movements  the  Church  took  the  foremost 
part ;  to  the  mediaeval  mind  a  philanthropy  not  eccle- 
siastical in  origin  and  control  was  almost  incon- 
ceivable. 

With  the  abolition  of  slavery  there  came  into 
greater  prominence  the  evils  of  poverty.  From  the 
first  the  Church  sought  to  meet  these  by  constant 
charity.  Collections  for  the  poor  always  formed  part 
of  the  Eucharist  services,  and  at  an  early  date  charity 
was  elevated  into  one  of  the  saving  graces  of  life. 
The  Church  at  Eome,  as  early  as  the  year  251,  sup- 
ported no  less  than  1,500  poor  people,  and  a  similar 
charity  was  manifested  elsewhere.  The  effects  of 
this  zeal  for  the  poor  were  even  more  apparent  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  as  soon  as  the  first  terrors  of  the  in- 
vasions were  passed.  All  over  Europe  the  rude  bar- 
barity of  the  times  was  mitigated  by  a  deep  pity,  the 
results  of  which  we  find  in  the  foundation  of  hos- 
pitals, lazar-houses,  and  almshouses  in  almost  every 
city  and  village.  ]^or  were  the  claims  of  the  poor  in 
the  matter  of  education  altogether  forgotten.  But 
to  this  we  shall  return  in  a  later  lecture. 

One  effect  of  the  mediseval  habit  of  charity  was  to 
break  down  the  barriers  which  separated  the  classes. 
Of  Aletta,  the  mother  of  St.  Bernard,  we  are  told 
that  ''she  was  accustomed  to  go  personally  from 
house  to  house,  searching  out  the  poor  and  weak 
.  .  .  preparing  food  for  them,  ministering  to  the 
sick,  cleansing  their  cups  and  vessels  with  her  own 
hands,  and  performing  for  them  the  humblest  ofi&ces 
usually  discharged  by  servants."  Such  records 
might  be  multiplied  ;  they  witness  to  a  kindliness  of 
sympathy  between  rich  and  poor  that  did  much  to 


THE  MODERN   SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      I57 

counteract  the  evils  of  feudalism,  aud  to  redress  eco- 
nomic inequalities.  But  such  kindliness  was  wholly 
restricted  to  the  pious  j  outside  the  Church  it  had  no 
existence. 

The  call  to  fraternity  and  to  the  works  of  love 
which  spring  from  brotherhood  reached  its  climax 
in  the  thirteenth  century  in  the  coming  of  the  friars. 
In  the  great  revival  ushered  in  by  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi  no  religious  life  seemed  to  be  complete  which 
did  not  devote  itself  to  the  care  of  the  outcast  or 
leper  or  give  of  its  substance  to  the  relief  of  the  sick 
and  the  aged.  Nor  were  such  ministrations  confined 
to  clerics.  By  his  foundation  of  his  Tertiaries  or 
Third  Order,  St.  Francis  claimed  the  allegiance  of 
the  laity  for  his  ideal.  In  an  age  when  all  men  were 
seeking  to  enter  a  guild  in  some  form  or  other, 
Francis  sought  to  enroll  all  classes  in  his  guild  of 
**The  Brothers  and  Sisters  of  Penitence.'^  The 
obligations  of  this  lay  fraternity  were  peace  and 
charity,  while  the  rich  were  to  distribute  their 
surplus  wealth  to  the  poor.  The  foundation  of  this 
Order,  soon  imitated  by  all  the  other  Mendicant 
orders,  was  the  beginning  of  a  social  revolution,  the 
depth  of  which  was  hidden  from  our  older  historians. 
For  centuries  the  laity  had  had  little  active  place  in 
the  organization  of  the  Church.  Now  Europe  was 
filled  with  a  host  of  earnest  laymen,  bound  together 
in  social  service  and  church  work  ;  for  Francis  pro- 
claimed that  the  life  and  labour  of  love  was  open  to 
every  Christian.  Of  this  call  to  service  we  see  the 
influences  in  the  rapid  rise  in  the  thirteenth  century 
in  France  alone  of  the  number  of  leper  hospitals  from 
a  few  to  over  two  thousand,  as  also  in  the  formation 


158  THE  DAWNING  OF 

of  other  societies  for  social  work.  By  nothing  is  the 
success  of  St.  Francis'  attempt  to  bring  the  classes 
together  more  clearly  brought  out  than  in  the  famous 
tale  of  the  Little  Flower  : 

^^  How  St.  Louis  J  King  of  France^  went  in  person  in 
the  guise  of  a  pilgrim  to  Perugia  for  to  visit  the  holy 
Brother  Giles.  ...  So  the  porter  went  to  Brother 
Giles  and  told  him  that  at  the  door  was  a  pilgrim 
that  asked  for  him.  .  .  .  And  being  inspired  of 
God  it  was  revealed  to  him  that  it  was  the  King 
of  France  :  so  straightway  with  great  fervour  he  left 
his  cell,  and  ran  to  the  door,  and  without  further 
questioning,  albeit  they  ne'er  had  seen  each  other  be- 
fore, kneeling  down  with  great  devotion  they  em- 
braced and  kissed  each  other,  with  much  signs  of 
tender  love  as  though  for  a  long  time  they  had  been 
close  familiar  friends ;  but  for  all  that  they  spoke 
not,  the  one  nor  the  other,  but  continued  in  this  em- 
brace in  silence." 

Let  us  hear  the  comment  of  one  of  our  own 
prophets.  "  Of  all  which  story  not  a  word,  of  course, 
is  credible  by  any  rational  person.  Certainly  not : 
the  spirit  nevertheless  which  created  the  story  is  an 
entirely  indisputable  fact  in  the  history  of  mankind. 
Whether  St.  Louis  and  Brother  Giles  ever  knelt 
together  in  Perugia  matters  not  a  whit.  That  a  king 
and  a  poor  monk  could  be  conceived  to  have  thoughts 
of  each  other  which  no  words  could  speak  .  .  . 
this  is  what  you  have  to  meditate  on  here."  ^ 

We  must  not  pass  away  from  this  question  of  the 
relation  of  the  Church  to  poverty  and  suffering  with- 
out pointing  out  one  of  the  factors  in  mediseval  life 
^Euskin,  "  Mornings  in  Florence,"  p.  89. 


THE  MODERN   SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      159 

which  made  for  charity.  The  Middle  Ages,  unlike 
the  twentieth  century,  were  not  afraid  of  poverty ; 
poverty  was  not  the  one  evil  of  life  which  more  than 
any  other  must  be  shunued,  whatever  the  price  in 
ideals  or  other  currency  of  the  soul  which  must  be 
paid.  So  far  from  looking  upon  poverty  as  a  crime 
or  stigma,  the  mediaeval  Church  erred  rather  in  the 
opposite  direction  ;  in  elevatiog  poverty,  provided 
it  was  voluntary,  into  the  mark  of  saintliuess.  But 
as  a  distinguished  American  professor  has  well 
pointed  out,  the  old  monkish  poverty  worship  was 
the  mediaeval  form  of  the  strenuous  life  "without 
brass  bands  or  uniforms  or  hysteria,  popular  applause 
or  lies  or  circumlocutions,"  ^  the  moral  equivalent  in 
the  social  sphere  of  that  school  of  discipline  which 
hitherto  in  the  world  at  large  had  been  chiefly  found 
in  the  pursuit  of  war.  Mediaeval  practice,  we  must 
confess,  was  not  always  in  accord  in  this  matter  with 
mediaeval  theory,  even  among  the  regulars ;  but  the 
Church  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  at  any  rate  true  to 
its  Founder  in  refusing  to  recognize  the  ideal  life  in 
the  successful  millionaire.  The  mediaeval  saints  and 
leaders  never  forgot  the  great  lesson  taught  us  in  the 
Old  Testament  that  God  is  always  on  the  side  of  the 
poor  and  suffering,  against  the  rich  and  strong. 
Great  wealth  and  great  piety  were  deemed  incom- 
patible ideas.  Eenunciation  of  riches  lay  at  the  root 
of  all  holiness,  and  in  such  renunciation  the  poor 
were  not  forgotten.  Again  and  again  we  find  that 
the  precept  of  Christ,  "Go,  sell  all  that  thou  hast 
and  give  to  the  poor,  and  come  follow  Me,"  is 
elevated  into  the  obligatory  rule  for  all  who  would 
*  W.  James,  "Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  367. 


l6o  THE   DAWNING  OF 

seek  the  higher  life.  In  the  records  of  the  saints  no 
text  is  so  fruitful  in  producing  the  great  crises  of 
the  soul,  or  in  leading  through  the  narrow  gate  to 
emancipation  and  light.  At  one  time  even  no  small 
party  in  the  Church — though  for  the  most  part  classed 
as  hopeless  enthusiasts,  Waldensians,  Spiritual  Fran- 
ciscans, Lollards,  and  the  like — sought  to  make 
absolute  poverty  the  sine  qua  non  of  all  true  spiritual 
life.  They  overstrained,  perhaps,  their  theory  of  the 
absolute  poverty  of  Jesus,  but  at  any  rate  they  never 
sinned  by  reducing  the  Saviour  to  a  bourgeois  re- 
former preaching  from  velvet  cushions  to  those  more 
needy  than  himself. 

Moreover,  in  its  doctrine  of  merit  by  works,  as 
distinct  from  justification  by  faith  alone,  the  Church 
possessed  a  potent  weapon  for  reducing  charity  into 
more  than  a  pious  sentiment.  We  must  own  that  too 
often  this  charity  sprang  from  selfish,  fearful  motives. 
Nevertheless,  instances  abound  of  attempts  to  win 
salvation  by  deeds  of  love  of  the  highest  benefit  to 
wider  circles  than  the  clergy.  On  all  hands,  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  even  before  the  coming  of  the  friars  we 
see  the  rise  of  institutions  of  mercy — hospitals,  lazar- 
houses,  almshouses,  orphanages — absolutely  unknown 
to  the  pagan  world.  The  number  of  mediaeval  holi- 
days, saint  days  and  the  like  have  often  received  the 
animadversions  of  Protestant  writers.  No  doubt  they 
were  excessive ;  but  they  did  much  to  sweeten  toil 
and  to  save  it  from  that  hopeless  monotony  which  is 
the  curse  of  the  modern  factory.  Even  the  mediaeval 
almsgiving,  though,  doubtless,  indiscriminate  and 
wasteful,  oftentimes  productive  of  the  very  miseries 
it  was  intended  to  cure,  must  not  be  wholly  judged 


THE  MODERN   SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      l6l 

by  the  rules  of  Political  Economy.  The  cultivation 
of  a  habit  if  not  a  sense  of  pity,  especially  in  a  society 
that  was  in  many  respects  coarse  and  brutal,  is  worth 
more  than  the  accumulation  of  capital.  The  con- 
tempt of  the  Middle  Ages  for  the  *'  Economic  Man," 
whose  \  interests  so  strangely  twisted  the  moral  life  of 
the  early  nineteenth  century,  would  justly  have  been 
unbounded.  And,  after  all,  we  must  allow  that  the 
life  of  one  humble,  sincere  follower  of  St.  Francis  has 
done  more  for  the  uplift  of  humanity  than  all  the 
writings  of  Eicardo  and  the  Manchester  School  of 
Economics. 

Ill 

As  regards  the  effect  of  the  Church  upon  war  our 
conclusion  is  not  altogether  satisfactory.  History 
alas !  shows  us  that  in  the  Middle  Ages  the  Church 
stirred  up  many  wars,  some  of  especial  ferocity. 
Nothing  could  be  more  appalling  in  its  bloodshed 
than  the  struggles  over  the  question  of  Investitures, 
which  began  with  Hildebraud,  and  which  were  not 
settled  until  fifty  years  later,  at  the  Concordat  of 
Worms  (1122).  More  ferocious  still  were  the  Cru- 
sades, whether  waged  by  the  flaming  zeal  of  a  new- 
born Europe  against  the  Muslim,  by  Teutonic  Knights 
against  the  heathen  Wends  of  Prussia,  or  by  catholic 
orthodoxy  under  Simon  de  Montfort  and  others 
against  the  Albigensian  heretics  of  France.  The 
ideal  of  peace  so  characteristic  of  the  early  Church, 
the  disinclination  to  have  anything  to  do  with  war 
or  the  soldier's  calling,  which  led  to  many  martyr- 
doms in  the  days  before  Constantine,*  gave  place  in 

^  See  my  "  Persecution  in  the  Early  Church,"  pp.  181-188  for 
a  full  discussion. 


l62  THE  DAWNING  OF 

the  Middle  Ages  to  a  delight  in  war,  one  cause  of 
which  was  too  often  the  fanatical  spirit  of  ecclesias- 
tical interests.  Against  this  it  is  but  a  slight  offset 
that  the  Church  instituted  in  the  eleventh  century 
the  ^' Truce  of  God,"  at  one  time  of  some  value  in 
repressing  private  wars.  This  Truce  forbade  all 
^'  neighbourly  raids  '^  from  Thursday  to  Monday  and 
at  certain  holy  seasons  of  the  year. 

The  whole  problem  of  war  is  the  most  difficult 
which  civilization  and  the  Church  have  yet  to  solve, 
and  alas !  at  the  present  moment,  we  seem  further 
from  obtaining  a  solution  than  ever.  For  the  Middle 
Ages  dreamed  of  a  papacy  sufficiently  strong  in  its 
righteousness  to  curb  the  ambition  of  kings.  This 
was  the  ideal  of  Hildebrand.  Before  his  soul  there 
arose  a  vision  of  a  vast  United  States  of  the  World, 
at  the  head  of  which,  supreme  over  kings  and  gov- 
ernors, should  be  the  Vicar  of  God.  To  the  several 
states  of  this  gigantic  Federation  should  be  left  the 
maximum  of  home-rule  consistent  with  the  full  con- 
trol and  responsibility  of  an  infallible  sovereign  who 
should  answer  ''on  the  dreadful  Day  of  Judgment 
before  the  Just  Judge"  not  only  for  the  right  dis- 
charge of  his  own  spiritual  duties,  but  also  for  the 
conduct  of  the  royal  underlings  through  whom  he 
ruled  the  world.  But  this  splendid  conception  of  a 
great  central  power  raised  above  the  disturbances  of 
worldly  life,  judging  monarchs  and  nations  alike  by 
the  dry  light  of  truth  and  righteousness,  dispensing 
justice  and  mercy  on  the  evil  and  on  the  good,  has  been 
found  wanting.  It  has  faded  with  the  common  light 
of  day,  or  rather  has  been  found  to  hide  beneath  its 
dreamy  splendours,  corruptions,  and  abuses  of  its 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      163 

own.  And  Europe,  bereft  even  of  its  dream  of  a 
coming  Pope  Angelico,  now  fills  its  belly  with  the 
husks  of  Machiavelli  and  his  modern  interpreters, 
Treitsche  and  von  Bernhardi.  For  many  millions 
of  the  most  enlightened  peoples  of  Europe  the  dream 
of  an  all-highest  War  Lord  has  displaced  the  vision 
of  one  supreme  spiritual  head.  A  Supreme  Court 
of  the  nations  is  still  an  airy  fancy.  And  the  cry  of 
the  Man  of  Sorrows  still  rises  in  vain;  ''They  will 
not  come  unto  Me,  that  they  may  find  peace  and 
life." 

But  to  return  to  our  theme.  Though  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  plead  that  the  Church  diminished  the  number 
of  wars,  we  may  yet  contend  that  the  Church  secured 
a  real  diminution  in  their  atrocity.  Throughout  the 
Middle  Ages  the  rights  of  the  enemy  over  his  con- 
quered foe  were  savage  enough  at  best,  nevertheless 
we  see  the  slow  growth  of  better  things.  '^  The  evan- 
gelical precepts  of  peace  and  love,'^  writes  Freeman, 
' '  did  not  put  an  end  to  war,  they  did  not  put  an  end 
to  aggressive  conquests,  but  they  distinctly  human- 
ized the  way  in  which  war  was  carried  on.  From 
this  time  forth  the  never-ending  wars  with  the  Welsh 
ceased  to  be  wars  of  extermination.  The  heathen 
English  had  been  satisfied  with  nothing  short  of  de- 
struction and  expulsion  of  their  enemies  ;  the  Chris- 
tian English  thought  it  enough  to  reduce  them  to 
political  subjection."  ^  We  have  an  illustration  of 
this  greater  humanity  of  war  in  the  way  in  which 
the  Church  secured  the  recognition  of  a  principle, 
utterly  unknown  in  the  Eoman  world,  that  Christian 
prisoners  of  war — Paynim  and  other  heathen  were 
*  Freeman,  "  Norman  Conquest." 


l64  THE  DAWNING  OF 

regarded  as  outside  the  pale  of  this  charity — should 
not  be  reduced  to  slavery. 

Moreover  the  ideal  of  chivalry — that  fine  flower  of 
mediaeval  honour  growing  in  the  unpromising  soil  of 
feudalism — which  the  Church  fostered  and  conse- 
crated, contained  within  itself  many  softening  ele- 
ments which  could  not  fail  to  mitigate  the  effects  of 
war.  True,  as  in  most  things  mediaeval  and  human, 
the  gap  between  the  ideal  and  the  actual  was  not  less 
in  the  warrior  class  than  in  the  monastery,  the  priest- 
hood, or  the  papacy  itself.  To  Froissart  the  Black 
Prince  was  the  very  flower  of  chivalry,  yet  no  horror 
could  be  more  awful  than  the  story  of  his  cruel  sack 
of  Limoges,  or  his  purposeless  exploits  in  Spain. 
Knights  and  ladies  were  just  as  inconsistent  as  all 
other  mediaeval  men  and  women,  nevertheless  their 
ideals,  as  expressed  in  abundant  romances  of  chiv- 
alry, were  not  altogether  without  effect,  in  spite  of 
the  actuality  of  cruelty,  greed,  and  lust.  Through 
the  Church  feudal  troth  was  broadened  into  largesse, 
courtesy,  and  pity.  The  ceremony  of  investiture  of 
the  knight  was  sanctified  by  religious  rites,  the  all 
night  vigil  of  the  candidate  over  his  arms  laid  by  the 
altar,  his  bath  as  the  symbol  of  purification,  the  early 
morning  mass  and  the  blessing  of  the  sword.  By  the 
Christian  knight  haughtiness  and  boasting  were  to 
be  held  as  vices. 

The  slaughter  of  the  Paynim  was  still,  of  course, 
the  main  end  of  knightly  warfare,  but  in  addition 
faith  and  obedience  were  inculcated  as  necessary  vir- 
tues. In  the  ideals  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the 
^'perfit  knight"  is  no  longer  an  ignorant  brutal 
warrior — a  Front  de  Boeuf,  the  berserker  fighting  for 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      165 

lust  and  gain — but  the  Cid  rescuing  Spain  from  the 
infidel,  Godfrey  of  Bouillon  who  sometimes  lingering 
at  prayer  forgot  the  hours  of  food,  nor  would  he  wear 
the  crown  where  Christ  had  worn  the  thorns,  or  that 
saintly  king  and  veritable  knight,  St.  Louis  of 
France,  whose  portrait  shines  out  forever  from  the 
stately  pages  of  the  Sire  de  Joinville,  and  who 
*'  wished  for  leprosy  or  any  other  bodily  evil  rather 
than  mortal  sin  should  come  into  his  soul.*^ 

Of  Tescelin,  the  father  of  St.  Bernard,  it  is  related 
that  though  ^*  noble  in  descent  and  rich  in  possessions, 
he  was  yet  a  great  lover  of  the  poor,  with  an  extraordi- 
nary love  of  justice,  so  that  he  was  accustomed  to 
wonder  that  it  should  seem  hard  for  any  to  observe 
justice  towards  others,  especially  that  they  should 
desert  the  justice  of  God  by  either  fear  or  love  of 
gain.  He  was  the  bravest  of  soldiers,  yet  shrank 
from  the  praises  which  others  sought.  He  never 
took  up  arms  except  in  defense  of  his  own  territory, 
or  at  the  call  of  his  feudal  lord."  Such  men  as 
Tescelin  were  not  so  rare  as  we  are  accustomed  to 
think.  But,  as  the  chronicler  adds,  this  knightly 
temper  was  all  due  to  his  **  magna  pietas." 

But  nowhere  does  the  new  conception  of  the  dig- 
nity that  religion  can  give  to  manhood  come  out  more 
completely  than  in  the  poems  that  centre  round  the 
English  Arthur,  and  in  the  contrast  they  present  to 
Archbishop  Turpin's  older  romances  of  Charlemagne 
and  Eoland.  The  king,  Lancelot,  Galahad,  Percival, 
and  their  quest  of  the  Grail  are  the  immortal  crea- 
tions of  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries.  But 
when  "Walter  de  Map — if  indeed  it  was  he — and  his 
German  followers  Hartmann  von  Aue,  Wolfram  von 


l66  THE  DAWNING  OF 

Eschenbach,  and  others,  purified  the  coarse  sougs  of 
animal  strength  and  passion  by  putting  into  them 
the  heavenly  mysteries,  they  did  more  than  write  a 
romance.  They  created  a  new  ideal.  Lancelot — 
noble,  true,  the  "perfit  knight''  in  bravery  and 
courtesy,  but  the  lover  alas  !  of  Arthur's  queen — and 
Tristram,  in  whose  love  for  Iseult  we  see  resistless 
passion  struggling  vainly  with  loyalty  and  honour, 
representatives  of  a  chivalry  without  purity,  cannot 
sit  in  the  Siege  Perilous  or  see  the  Holy  Grail.  This 
is  reserved  for  Sir  Galahad,  ^'the  haut  Prince,"  the 
*' servant  of  Jesus  Christ,"  who  ^'bore  the  crown  of 
gold  .  .  .  and  had  about  him  a  great  fellowship 
of  angels,"  or  for  Percival,  "as  the  tale  telleth  one 
of  the  men  of  the  world  at  that  time  that  most  be- 
lieved in  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 

IV 

That  the  Church  uplifted  the  ideal  and  status  of 
woman  cannot  be  denied.  This  she  accomplished  in- 
directly rather  than  of  set  purpose.  Whatever  else 
may  be  said  about  the  mediaeval  cult  of  the  Virgin 
this  much  must  be  acknowledged,  the  immense  in- 
fluence it  exerted  upon  the  whole  conception  of 
womanhood.  More  than  dogmatic  teaching,  the  cult 
of  the  Virgin,  under  its  different  aspects,  more  espe- 
cially as  Mater  Dolorosa,  or  as  Virgin  and  Child, 
taught  men  the  sacredness  of  the  mother,  and  the 
majesty  of  suffering  gentleness.  The  perfect  type  of 
the  pure  woman  was  given  a  place  in  heaven  that 
was  but  little  lower  than  God. 

Herein  we  see  another  of  the  abounding  contradic- 
tions of  the  mediaeval  Church.     For  writers  not  a 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      167 

few  have  sometimes  urged  that  the  mediseval  Church, 
by  its  exaggeration  of  the  value  of  a  celibate  life,  by 
the  reverence  it  paid  to  those  who  abandoned  the 
cares  and  duties  of  motherhood  and  fatherhood  for 
the  contemplative  life  of  the  cloisters,  lowered  the 
ideal  of  the  home  and  of  woman  in  special.  There 
is  in  this  indictment  considerable  truth.  No  doubt, 
as  the  Eeformation  felt,  the  monastery  is  opposed  to 
the  home,  and  an  exaggerated  emphasis  upon  conse- 
crated virginity  is  inimical  to  the  best  interests  of 
the  State.  Nunneries,  two  centuries  before  the 
Eeformation,  had  outlived  their  usefulness  ;  a  suffi- 
cient proof  of  this  may  be  found  in  their  general 
neglect  and  reduced  numbers.  Nevertheless,  in 
earlier  ages  the  nunnery  had  a  part  to  play  in  civ- 
ilization of  the  utmost  importance.  Only  in  the 
monastic  life  was  the  solitary  woman  safe  from  the 
unbridled  lust  of  the  powerful ;  or,  if  she  possessed 
property,  from  being  forced  into  a  marriage  that  was 
hateful  to  her.  Into  the  retreat  of  the  monastery, 
guarded  by  sacrosanct  terrors,  none  dare  break. 
Barbarians  who  ventured  to  insult  ^Hhe  brides  of 
God  "  soon  experienced,  or  thought  they  experienced, 
His  avenging  wrath.  Hence  the  ideal  of  virginity, 
though  exaggerated,  was  not  without  value  in  coun- 
teracting the  lustful  realities  of  the  world  around. 
But  this  must  not  blind  us  to  the  evil  side  of  the 
monastic  ideal.  The  monkish  vilification  of  the 
woman  who  did  not  become  a  nun  was  altogether 
harmful.  In  the  phrase  of  TertuUian  woman  was 
looked  upon  as  thejanua  Diabolic  the  source  of  all  evil, 
the  temptress  without  whose  baleful  influences  man 
would  never  have  lost  his  Eden.     In  the  most  popular 


1 68  THE  DAWNING  OF 

handbook  of  medigBval  sermons,  the  '^SiDeculumEccle- 
sise  "  of  Honorius  of  Autun  (+1130),  we  are  expressly- 
told  that  ^'nothing  so  estranges  man  from  God  as  the 
love  of  women."  That  this  love  might  be  to  a  man 
the  wings  of  his  soul  was  a  truth  that  was  in  the  main 
hidden  from  the  mediaeval  Church.  On  the  contrary, 
nothing  is  more  common  in  the  literature  of  the 
mediseval  Church,  following  the  example  set  by  Ter- 
tullian  and  the  Fathers,  than  discussions  on  the  rela- 
tive merits  of  marriage  and  celibacy.  But  we  are 
never  left  in  any  doubt  as  to  the  side  on  which  the 
verdict  will  be  given.  Marriage  is  only  a  secondary 
good  for  those  otherwise  unable  to  preserve  their 
continence.  The  unclean  beasts,  said  Jerome,  in  a 
sentence  that  mediseval  preachers  loved  to  quote, 
went  infco  the  ark  in  pairs ;  the  clean  by  sevens. 
*' Marriage,"  said  St.  Martin,  "belongs  to  those 
things  which  are  excused,  but  virginity  points  to 
glory."  And  yet,  by  another  mediaeval  contradic- 
tion, the  very  Church,  whose  most  powerful  section 
thus  vilified  women  and  marriage,  exalted  marriage 
into  a  sacrament  and  proclaimed  its  indissoluble 
character.  Moreover,  against  the  lowering  of  woman 
by  the  monk  we  must  place  the  constant  refusal  of 
the  Chftrch  to  tamper  with  the  binding  character  of 
the  marriage  vows.  She  would  have  nothing  to  do 
with  loose  laws  of  divorce.  How  great  the  debt  civ- 
ilization thereby  incurred  can  only  be  realized  by 
those  who  try  to  picture  the  effect  upon  the  bar- 
barians for  evil  if  the  Church  had  given  to  the  un- 
curbed passions  of  man  facilities  for  divorce  which 
are  the  disgrace  and  weakness  of  many  modern  states. 
Henry  VIII  would  have  been  a  paragon  of  self- re- 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      169 

straint  in  comparison  with  some  of  the  results  that 
would  have  followed. 

The  contradictions  in  mediseval  teaching  as  regards 
woman  and  marriage  are  capable  of  explanation. 
When  we  examine  the  matter  in  detail  we  find  that 
the  vilification  of  woman  and  marriage  was  the  work 
of  the  monk  ;  the  exaltation  of  marriage  as  a  sacra- 
ment and  the  proclamation  of  its  indissoluble  char- 
acter was  the  teaching  of  the  secular  Church.  Now 
Monasticism  was  essentially  individualistic,  and  in 
its  discussion  of  marriage  we  see  this  individualism 
in  its  most  anarchic  expression.  Social  claims  and 
social  instinct  are  altogether  overlooked.  The  ut- 
most concession  that  some  of  the  monkish  writers 
will  grant  to  the  argument  that  their  principles  if 
carried  out  would  destroy  the  race  is  to  fall  back 
upon  the  ability  of  God,  if  needful,  to  provide  other 
means  of  propagation.  Such  a  view,  in  its  individ- 
ualistic selfishness,  differs  from  anarchism  merely  by 
the  absence  of  every  ray  of  hope.  Opposed  to  this 
individualism  of  Monasticism  we  have  the  Catholic 
Church,  whose  great  strength  as  we  have  seen  lay  in 
its  emphasis  of  solidarity.  But  such  a  principle  in- 
volved, of  necessity,  that  she  should  assert  the  sacred 
indissoluble  character  of  marriage,  while  at  the  same 
time  she  allowed  the  anarchist  individualism  of  Mon- 
asticism to  have  full  play.  But  such  contradictions, 
though  puzzling  to  the  more  logical  modern,  excited 
neither  comment  nor  surprise  in  the  mediaeval  mind. 

Though  the  new  woman  is  altogether  a  modern 
creation,  whose  ethical  and  civilizing  value  time 
alone  can  determine,  the  reader  should  not  forget  the 
important  place  which  woman  often  attained  in  the 


lyo  THE  DAWNING  OF 

mediseval  Church,  and,  in  consequence,  in  the  medi- 
ae val  State.  Few  nobler  types  of  womanhood  have 
ever  appeared  than  Joan  of  Arc  or  Catherine  of 
Siena.  The  one  delivered  France  from  her  invaders  ; 
the  other  was  the  virtual  ruler  of  Northern  Italy,  the 
trusted  adviser  and  correspondent  of  popes.  Few 
prophets  secured  more  attention  than  was  given 
Elizabeth  of  Schonau  (+1165),  Hildegard  of  Bin  gen 
(+1179),  or  Bridget  of  Sweden  (+1373)  ;  few  mystics 
whose  direct  and  utter  passion  realized  more  intently 
the  love  of  God  than  Mechthild  of  Magdeburg 
(+1277) — the  forerunner  of  the  more  logical  Eck- 
hardt,  Tauler,  and  Suso, — or  Juliana  of  Norwich.  But 
these  characters,  so  beautiful  and  rare,  were  largely 
dependent  on  their  mediaeval  environment.  That  no 
Joan  of  Arc  could  deliver  France  to-day  is  a  certainty 
that  lies  altogether  apart  from  Krupp  guns  and  trench 
warfare  that  touches  rather  the  change  from  the 
mediaeval  to  the  modern  mind.  But  an  age  which 
could  produce  a  Joan  of  Arc,  a  St.  Catherine,  or  that 
rare  type  of  womanly  gentleness  and  self-abnegation, 
Elizabeth  of  Thuringia  (+1231),  may  be  forgiven,  for 
their  sakes,  many  monastic  exaggerations. 

The  noblest  place  of  woman  is  in  the  home,  and 
mediaeval  home  life  was  oftentimes  more  beautiful 
than  we  are  wont  to  allow.  Again  and  again  in  the 
lesser  known  annals  of  the  age  we  find  records  of  de- 
voted mothers  who  trained  up  their  children  for 
service  in  the  Church  and  State  with  an  intensity  of 
consecration  which  iufl.uenced  their  whole  subsequent 
life.  Of  such  were  the  mother  of  St.  Anselm,  and 
the  mother  of  St.  Bernard,  and  many  other  illustri- 
ous examples  in  cottage  and  castle.     In  the  Middle 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      171 

Ages,  as  in  every  age,  the  germ- cell  of  all  that  was 
best  in  the  social  system  of  the  times  lay  in  the  purity 
and  consecrated  zeal  of  Christian  motherhood. 


Our  limits  of  space  forbid  us  to  treat,  as  we  should 
desire,  of  the  place  of  the  Church  in  the  development 
of  the  concepts  of  the  Law.  We  must  pass  by  this 
subject  and  turn  to  the  assistance  given  by  the 
Church  to  the  cause  of  civil  liberty.  As  liberty 
depends  upon  law  the  development  of  liberty  was  of 
course  later  than  the  emphasis  of  law.  In  the  early 
Middle  Ages  the  Church  threw  its  influence  into  the 
scale  of  authority,  and  abandoned  her  appeal  for 
liberty — one  great  source  of  her  power  in  the  Eoman 
Empire,  in  the  days  when  she  was  a  persecuted  rebel 
— for  reliance  upon  the  rulers  of  the  new  nations. 
To  this  change,  no  doubt,  the  Church  was  driven 
through  the  struggle  with  the  barbarians.  To  re- 
store order  where  all  was  chaos  and  ruin  needed  not 
so  much  liberty  as  force,  the  authority  of  such  men 
as  Charles  the  Great,  or  of  William  the  Conqueror. 
In  this  matter  the  Church  of  the  Dark  Ages  was  on 
the  side  of  the  legions. 

But  in  the  later  Middle  Ages,  when  the  peril  of  the 
new  nations  had  passed  away,  the  Church  returned, 
to  some  extent  at  least,  to  its  former  attitude,  stripped 
of  all  the  license  and  anarchism  of  her  rebellious 
days,  and  became  once  more,  though  grudgingly, 
the  friend  of  liberty.  We  may  frankly  own  that  her 
assistance  was  rather  accidental  than  deliberate ; 
that  the  object  of  the  Church  was  to  obtain  authority 
for  herself  by  the  subjection  or  depreciation  of  the 


172  THE  DAWNING  OF 

rival  State,  especially  of  the  Empire  j  the  liberty  of 
the  individual  was  her  last  concern.  Nevertheless, 
but  for  the  Church,  the  nations  of  the  West  would 
have  been  ground  between  the  upper  and  nether 
millstones,  the  competing  tyrannies  of  local  magnates 
and  absolute  monarchs.  The  influence  of  the  pa- 
pacy, from  the  days  of  Hildebrand  onward,  was 
always  cast  against  the  claim  of  kings  to  exercise 
authority  by  an  indefeasible  title,  if  only  because 
such  a  claim  would  have  been  fatal  to  the  Hilde- 
brandine  idea  of  a  papal  overlord.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  right  of  kings  was  an 
invention  of  the  autocrats  of  the  Reformation,  spe- 
cially devised  as  an  answer  to  the  claim  of  Eome. 
So  little  was  it  accepted  by  the  mediaeval  Church  that 
ecclesiastical  lawyers  and  theologians  were  firm  in 
their  assertion  of  the  right  not  merely  of  the  papacy 
but  of  the  people  ^^to  root  out  and  pull  down,  to 
build  and  to  plant, "  to  quote  a  phrase  often  on  the 
lips  of  Hildebrand,  princes  and  governors. 

*' Kings  and  dukes,"  wrote  Hildebrand  to  Bishop 
Hermann  of  Metz,  in  words  that  remind  us  of  a 
Jacobin  of  the  French  Revolution,  **  owe  their  origin 
to  men  guilty  of  every  crime,  ignorant  of  God,  and 
swayed  by  the  devil.'* 

'*A  king,"  said  Thomas  Aquinas,  **who  is  un- 
faithful to  his  duty  forfeits  his  claim  to  obedience. 
It  is  not  rebellion  to  depose  him,  for  he  is  himself  a 
rebel  whom  the  nation  has  a  right  to  pull  down." 
"A  king,"  we  read,  ^'is  not  a  name  of  nature,  a 
title  of  office,  nor  do  the  people  exalt  him  so  high 
above  it  in  order  to  give  him  the  free  power  of  play- 
ing the  tyrant  in  its  midst,  but  to  defend  it  from 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      1 73 

tyranny.  If  one  should  engage  a  man  for  a  fair  wage 
to  tend  swine," — the  simile  as  Dr.  Poole  observes  is 
not  flattering, — ^'and  he  find  means  not  to  tend  but 
to  steal  them,  would  one  not  remove  him  from  his 
charge  ?  "  The  words  are  the  words  of  Manegold,  a 
priest  of  Alsace,  but  the  voice  seems  the  voice  of 
Eousseau. 

Manegold  may  be  dismissed  as  an  extravagant,  but 
John  of  Salisbury  (+1180)  cannot  be  so  regarded. 
The  pupil  of  Abailard,  the  secretary  of  Becket,  the 
intimate  friend  of  Adrian  IV,  the  agent  by  whom 
Henry  II  obtained  the  latter' s  sanction  for  his  con- 
quest of  Ireland,  John  of  Salisbury  was  one  of  the  fore- 
most scholars  and  thinkers  of  his  age.  In  his  ^'  Poli- 
craticus"  John  makes  the  first  real  attempt  since 
Augustine  to  frame  a  theory  of  politics,  but  his  basis 
is  the  strict  subordination  of  the  secular  to  the  spiri- 
tual. **The  prince,"  he  claims,  ^^is  the  servant  of 
the  priesthood."  "  Vain  is  the  authority  of  all  laws 
except  they  bear  the  image  of  the  divine  law  ;  and 
useless  is  the  decree  of  a  prince  unless  it  be  conform- 
able to  the  discipline  of  the  Church."  But,  starting 
from  these  premises,  in  some  respects  he  is  a  more 
advanced  Jacobin  even  than  Manegold  and  lays 
down,  with  peculiar  emphasis,  the  duty  not  only  of 
deposing  but  even  of  slaying  tyrants.  The  greater 
part  of  his  work  would  have  commended  itself  fully 
to  Cromwell's  Ironsides  ;  any  difference  of  opinion 
would  have  centred  round  the  nature  of  the  spiritual 
power  that  is  supreme. 

We  see  how  these  doctrines,  originally  formulated 
by  the  Church  for  her  own  purposes,  and  with  limi- 
tations that  guarded  her  own  interests,  could  minister 


174  THE  DAWNING  OF 

iu  other  hands  to  the  growth  of  liberty,  when  Thomas 
Aquinas  goes  on  to  add  to  his  claim  of  the  nation's 
right  to  depose  its  ruler  :  ^*  But  it  is  better  to  abridge 
the  king's  power  that  he  may  be  unable  to  abuse  it. 
For  this  purpose  the  whole  nation  ought  to  have  a 
share  in  governing  itself.  The  Constitution  ought  to 
combine  a  limited  and  elected  monarchy  with  an 
aristocracy  of  merit,  and  such  an  admixture  of 
democracy  as  shall  admit  all  claims  to  office  by 
popular  election.  No  government  has  a  right  to 
levy  taxes  beyond  the  limit  determined  by  the 
people.  All  political  authority  is  derived  from 
popular  suffrage,  and  all  laws  must  be  made  by 
the  people  or  their  representatives."  There  was 
in  fact  no  concession  that  Hildebrand  and  his  school 
would  not  have  made  to  democratic  theory,  provided 
democracy  would  acknowledge  his  claims  and  do  his 
bidding. 

The  assertion  of  the  great  principles  of  liberty  from 
a  standpoint  other  than  the  supremacy  of  the  spiri- 
tual is  clearly  found  in  the  *' Defensor  Pacis'^  (1324) 
the  magnum  opus  of  the  great  mediaeval  political 
thinker,  Marsiglio  of  Padua,  to  whose  bold  views  on 
the  liberty  of  thought  we  have  already  alluded. 
Than  Marsiglio  no  seer  ever  had  a  clearer  vision  of 
the  new  order  towards  which  the  world  was  slowly 
moving ;  no  prophet  ever  glanced  deeper  into  the 
future.  In  his  principles  the  modern  Constitutional 
statesman,  the  modern  Protestant  finds  little  to  alter  ; 
he  has  only  to  develop  and  fill  in  the  outline.  Mar- 
siglio's  writings  give  us  the  ideals  which  now  regu- 
late the  progress  of  Europe,  though  many  of  them 
are  still  unrealized.    So  far  is  he  above  his  age  in 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      1 75 

the  breadth  of  his  outlook  that  the  truths  he  pro- 
claimed have  had  to  be  rediscovered  by  the  political 
thinkers  of  modern  times,  without  even  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  mediaeval  prophet  who  had  thought  them 
out  in  bygone  days. 

In  his  first  book  Marsiglio  discusses  the  origin  and 
principles  of  governors.  Sovereignty,  so  Marsiglio 
held,  rests  with  the  people,  ^'  from  whom,  or  the 
majority  of  them,  determining  by  their  choice  or 
will,  expressed  by  speech  in  the  general  assembly 
of  citizens,  proceeds  all  right  and  power."  For  the 
purposes  of  action  ^Hhe  rule  of  the  king  is  perhaps 
the  more  perfect,"  but  the  king,  as  the  officer  of  the 
people,  must  be  directly  elected.  Marsiglio  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  either  divine  right  or  the 
hereditary  principle.  Such  elected  monarch  is  re- 
sponsible to  the  people,  whose  instrument  he  is,  and 
by  whom  he  may  be  deposed  if  he  override  the  na- 
tional will.  Equally  remarkable  is  Marsiglio' s  an- 
ticipation of  certain  modern  social  movements.  He 
would  give  to  the  civil  power  the  right  of  determin- 
ing the  number  of  men  to  be  employed  in  every  trade 
or  profession.  In  his  second  book  Marsiglio  pro- 
ceeds to  examine  the  nature  of  the  priesthood  and  its 
relation  to  the  State.  He  sweeps  away  the  preten- 
sions of  a  sacerdotal  order,  and  would  treat  the 
clergy,  in  all  but  their  strictly  spiritual  functions, 
exactly  the  same  as  all  other  members  of  the  civil 
society.  With  Marsiglio  the  State  is  supreme,  or 
rather,  State  and  Church — this  last  he  defines  as  the 
corporation  of  the  faithful — become  one.  Ecclesi- 
astics, even  the  pope  himself,  must  be  subject  to  the 
State's  tribunals;   their  number  be  limited  by  its 


176  THE  DAWNING  OF 

pleasure.  To  the  State  also  beloDgs  all  patronage, 
which  should  as  a  rule  be  exercised  by  the  free  elec- 
tion of  the  parish  itself,  with  which  also  should  rest 
the  power  of  dismissal.  The  ecclesiastical  property 
must  be  vested  in  the  State  which  can  at  any  time 
secularize  superfluities  to  other  uses. 

The  student,  pondering  over  these  extracts  from 
Thomas  Aquinas  and  Marsiglio,  cannot  fail  to  note 
the  fundamental  opposition  of  these  two  great  writ- 
ers. Thomas  was,  and  is  still  the  chosen  advocate 
of  Eome,  its  supreme  doctor  ;  Marsiglio,  the  leader 
of  revolt,  from  whom  Ockham,  Wyclif  and  other 
rebels  gained  all  that  was  most  characteristic  and 
daring  in  their  doctrines.  Nevertheless  these  two 
writers  are  united,  for  purposes  completely  contra- 
dictory, in  laying  down  principles  that  were  fatal 
to  the  absolutism  of  feudal  society.  The  churchman 
and  the  doctrinaire  philosopher  are  one  in  asserting 
the  rights  of  democracy,  and  the  criminal  nature  of 
absolute  power.  The  lawfulness  of  insurrection  was 
not  only  admitted  by  both,  but  defined  as  a  duty 
sanctioned  by  religion.  The  representative  character 
of  all  offices  and  institutions,  both  in  Church  and 
State,  was  also  clearly  laid  down  by  both.  The  re- 
sult of  these  ideas,  thus  widely  promulgated,  was 
seen  In  the  struggle  in  the  fourteenth  century  be- 
tween democracy  and  privilege,  between  the  guilded 
and  the  unguilded.  But  Eienzi,  Wyclif,  Artevelde, 
John  Ball  and  other  champions  of  freedom  were  be- 
fore their  age.  The  story  of  the  unfortunate  circum- 
stances through  which  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries  saw  the  set-back  of  the  principles  of  liberty 
and  the  triumph  of  absolutism  over  the  nascent  in- 


THE  MODERN   SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      1 77 

stitutions  of  democracy,  does  not  belong  to  our  pres- 
ent purpose.  But  we  must  not  forget  the  debt  which 
democracy  will  always  owe  to  the  churchmen  and 
heretics,  who,  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  cen- 
turies for  opposite  reasons,  so  clearly  enunciated  the 
main  principles  of  freedom. 

As  regards  liberty  of  thought  there  is  less  to  be 
said.  The  whole  conception  as  we  have  pointed  out 
in  our  discussion  of  the  Inquisition  was  alien  to  the 
times  aiid  to  the  predominant  emphasis  of  solidarity. 
But  we  should  do  well  to  avoid  exaggeration. 
Scholasticism,  at  least  in  its  earlier  developments, 
was  by  no  means  the  crude,  unreal,  hair-splitting  ap- 
peal to  mere  logic  and  authority  which  in  its  later 
days  it  tended  to  become.  The  thoughts  of  Anselm 
and  Abailard  move  in  spheres  far  above  the  narrow 
controversies  of  the  pedants.  Though  modern  science 
cannot  sufficiently  express  its  contempt  for  the  vast 
superstructure  which  the  schoolmen  raised  on  their 
narrow  and  flimsy  foundations,  nevertheless  that 
strange  system  was  in  a  true  sense  preparing  the  way 
for  better  things.  And,  within  the  limits  provided, 
there  never  was  a  time,  until  the  Eeformation,  when 
considerable  liberty  of  thought  and  expression  was 
not  allowed,  especially  in  the  universities.  As  a 
rule,  this  liberty  of  individual  judgment  always  ad- 
justed itself  in  the  last  resort  to  certain  fundamental 
positions  of  the  Church,  though  the  method  of  adjust- 
ment is  often  violent.  Differences  rarely  touched  the 
deeper  centres,  for,  at  bottom,  the  diverse  schools, 
however  apparently  opposed,  were  one.  Viewed 
from  the  standpoint  of  these  latter  days  the  matters 
which  separated  Gersom  from  Hus,  to  take  a  noted 


178  THE  DAWNING  OF 

illustration  of  antagonism,  were  as  nothing  compared 
with  the  doctrines  in  which  they  were  agreed.  Here 
and  there,  as  in  the  case  of  Marsiglio  and  Wyclif,  the 
unity  of  mediaeval  thought  was  broken,  but  such 
breach  was  more  often  political  than  theological. 
But  with  the  development  of  mediaeval  thought  from 
the  fall  of  the  Empire  to  the  Eeformation  I  have 
dealt  elsewhere.^ 

A  last  matter  to  which  we  would  direct  your  at- 
tention is  the  Church's  contribution  to  the  growth 
of  democracy  through  her  encouragement  in  the  later 
Middle  Ages,  especially  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
of  social  guilds  and  fraternities.  In  England  at  any 
rate,  though  originally  founded  in  imitation  of  the 
successful  craft  or  trade  guilds  of  Loudon,  Bristol, 
and  other  great  cities,  the  new  guilds  had  little  con- 
nection with  trade.  Their  object  was  the  furtherance 
of  neighbourliness  and  mutual  help.  They  combined 
the  advantages  of  a  social  club  with  the  benefits  of 
insurance  and  assurance  against  fire,  water,  thefts, 
poverty,  disease  and  death.  They  undertook  for 
their  members  the  duties  now  discharged  by  burial 
clubs,  by  hospitals,  by  almshouses,  and  by  the 
guardians  of  the  poor.  By  steadying  the  price  of 
labour,  or  by  obtaining  work  for  their  members,  they 
discharged  the  function  of  modern  trades  unions. 
They  discouraged  judicial  strife  by  insisting  upon 
their  members  submitting  to  arbitration.  In  some 
towns,  for  instance  Coventry  and  York,  the  guilds 
found  lodgings  and  food  for  poor  strangers.  In 
times  of  special  need,  when  the  bridge  was  broken 

'See  the  author's  "Christian  Thought  to  the  Reformation  " 
(New  York,  1911). 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      1 79 

down,  or  the  steeple  in  need  of  repair,  the  guilds  of  a 
town  united  to  carry  out  the  object.  They  provided 
dowers  for  portionless  girls ;  they  furnished  school 
fees  for  promising  lads ;  in  some  places,  as  for 
instance  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  they  maintained 
guild  schools  of  their  own  5  on  the  coast  they  insured 
against  loss  at  sea ;  above  all,  they  made  the  ^' Merry 
England  "  of  our  fathers,  by  reason  of  their  incessant 
Church  ales  and  other  festive  "mummings,"  miracle- 
plays,  *' mysteries,"  and  the  like.  To  this  joyous- 
ness  of  life  they  largely  contributed  by  the  attention 
they  paid  to  singing,  in  many  places  maintaining  a 
special  song-master. 

From  the  first  the  guilds  were  strictly  associated 
with  the  Church.  Each  guild  linked  itself  on  to 
some  special  saint,  whose  feast-day  it  kept  with 
processions  and  banquets,  and  for  whose  service  it 
provided  priests,  candles,  and  funds.  The  wealthier 
guilds  even  maintained  chaplains  of  their  own,  at 
the  cost  of  ten  marks  a  year — the  salary  in  those 
days  of  the  headmaster  of  Eton — to  offer  masses  for 
the  quick  and  the  dead.  On  Corpus  Christi  day  the 
guilds  of  a  town,  especially  in  a  cathedral  city,  united 
in  a  gigantic  procession.  On  the  death  of  any  mem- 
ber the  whole  guild  attended  the  funeral,  and  saw  to 
it  that  the  family  was  not  left  without  support. 

The  popularity  of  these  guilds,  if  we  may  judge 
from  their  number  and  rapid  growth,  was  extraordi- 
nary. In  London  there  were  at  least  ninety  of  them 
connected  with  parish  churches.  There  were  fifty- 
five  at  Lynn.  Nor  were  they  confined  to  the  larger 
towns.  There  were  eight  guilds  in  the  little  parish 
of  Oxburgh    in  Norfolk,   twelve  at  Ashburton — a 


l8o  THE  DAWNING  OF 

small  town  in  Devonshire,  and  forty-two  at  the 
equally  small  town  of  Bodmin  in  Cornwall.  By  the 
beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century  there  was  scarcely 
a  town  or  village  in  England  of  any  importance 
without  them.  Some  of  these,  as  for  instance  the 
great  Guilds  in  York  and  Boston,  possessed  large 
endowments.  Many  included  women  as  well  as 
men.  By  one  of  the  greatest  crimes  in  history  nearly 
all  these  guilds  were  swept  away  at  the  Reformation  ; 
in  a  few  places  a  pitiful  fragment  of  the  spoils  being 
handed  over  to  the  people  to  establish  a  school, 
though  more  often  as  for  instance  at  Birmingham  the 
existing  endowments  of  the  guild  school  were  seized, 
and  a  small  portion  handed  back  to  the  ^^new 
foundation."  Even  the  endowments  for  the  poor 
were  greedily  appropriated  by  men  who  built  up 
.princely  fortunes  by  the  robbery  of  the  parish.  But 
for  this  great  pillage  of  social  funds  England  to-day 
in  many  districts  would  have  needed  no  poor-law, 
and  no  school-rate.  Only  slowly  are  we  waking  up 
to  the  great  loss  to  the  life  and  well-being  of  the 
people  which  has  followed  the  divorce  of  religion 
from  the  corporate  life,  the  reduction  of  insurance 
and  assurance  to  mere  commercial  transactions  bereft 
of  all  human  elements,  of  all  care  for  the  poor  to  a 
matter  for  the  guardians.  In  all  these  matters  the 
nineteenth  century  in  its  early  years  was  a  night- 
mare, not  the  less  hideous  because  of  the  smug  self- 
satisfied  blindness  with  which  it  looked  down  upon 
ages  that  it  deemed  benighted  and  ^'dark."  To  the 
Ideals  and  practice  of  the  mediaeval  guilds,  whose 
centre,  in  all  their  attempts  to  realize  brotherhood, 
was  the  Church,  the  twentieth  century  delivered,  as 


THE  MODERN  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS      l8l 

we  trust,  from  a  degradiDg  and  selfish  political 
economy,  and  from  the  dominance  of  capitalism 
would  do  well  to  return,  though,  of  course,  such  re- 
turn must  be  on  new  lines  adapted  to  a  new  age. 


LECTURE  V 

THE  MONKS  AND 
THEIR     WORK 


LECTURE  V 
THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK 


IN  any  estimate  of  the  Church's  task  in  the  Middle 
Ages  and  the  means  whereby  she  accomplished 
it  it  is  impossible  to  ignore  the  work  of  Monas- 
ticism.  In  our  present  lecture  we  propose  to  touch 
briefly  upon  the  origins  and  development  of  Monas- 
ticism  in  mediseval  times,  and  then  to  dwell  more 
fully  upon  its  effects  and  teaching. 

In  the  religious  life  of  the  Middle  Ages  the  two 
distinguishing  features  are  the  power  of  the  papacy 
and  the  strength  of  Monasticism.  The  two  were 
mutually  dependent.  It  was  by  no  accident  of  his- 
tory that  the  political  fall  of  the  papacy  coincided 
with  the  dissolution  of  Monasticism.  But  for  the 
help  of  Eome  the  monasteries  could  not  have  resisted 
the  attacks  of  covetous  kings  ;  but  for  the  monks  the 
pope  would  not  have  succeeded  in  building  up  his 
universal  dominion.  This  was  the  political  side  of 
their  work,  in  reality  the  least  part  of  their  mission. 
Judged  from  the  standpoint  of  Monasticism' s  contri- 
bution to  religion  the  monk,  as  we  have  seen  already, 
was  the  pioneer  missionary  of  the  Church.  When  the 
zeal  of  the  Benedictines  and  Cistercians  grew  cold  this 
missionary  work  was  taken  up  by  the  new  orders  of 

185 


l86  THE   MONKS  AND   THEIR  WORK 

friars,  who  as  early  as  1308  reached  Persia  itself  and 
in  1326  established  themselves  in  Ceylon.  Apart 
from  this  in  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries  the  hope 
of  Monasticism  lay  in  the  monastery.  The  monk 
and  not  the  secular  represented  all  that  was  vital 
and  progressive.  On  the  social  side  it  was  given 
to  Monasticism  to  show  forth  in  the  early  Middle 
Ages  in  the  midst  of  barbarism  an  ordered,  if  one- 
sided, life,  and  moral  ideals  above  the  age  j  and  to 
lay,  in  the  midst  of  rude  and  opposing  forces,  the 
foundations  of  a  noble  civilization.  To  this  we  shall 
return  ;  our  first  care  is  to  gain  some  insight  into  the 
place  in  the  economy  of  Church  and  State  of  the 
monastic  orders. 

Of  the  mediaeval  papacy  the  real  founder  was 
Gregory  the  Great ;  nor  is  it  by  accident  that  he  was 
the  first  monk  to  ascend  the  papal  throne.  With  the 
steps  and  processes  whereby  the  see  of  St.  Peter 
slowly  secured  its  domination  over  the  Western 
Church  we  are  not  here  concerned ;  suffice  that  we 
point  out  the  essential  features  of  that  primacy  in 
their  relation  to  Monasticism.  First  and  foremost 
is  the  fact  that  this  primacy  was  founded,  whether 
rightly  or  wrongly,  upon  imperialism  or  Catholicism 
as  over  against  nationalism  in  the  Church.  In  the 
ordinary  course  of  events  the  leaders  of  revolt  against 
this  oppression  of  nationalism  would  have  been  the 
great  national  primates,  Canterbury,  Aries,  Eheims, 
Mainz,  Hamburg,  Lund,  and  the  like.  If  they  had 
been  left  to  themselves  the  natural  tendency  of  these 
great  metropolitans  would  have  been  to  turn  the 
Church  in  the  West  into  a  federal  republic  under  the 
headship  rather  than  under  the  autocracy  of  Eome  ; 


THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK  187 

much  in  the  same  way  as  we  see  in  the  early  Church 
the  great  patriarchates  of  Antioch,  Alexandria,  Jeru- 
salem, and,  later,  Constantinople,  successfully  claim- 
iug  equality  with  Eome  itself,  save  only  the  acknowl- 
edgment that  the  successor  of  St.  Peter  was  primus 
inter  pares.  But  this  tendency  in  the  West  was  de- 
feated, in  part  by  the  need  of  these  great  metropoli- 
tans for  papal  support  in  their  constant  warfare  with 
the  civic  authority,  and  in  part  by  the  endeavours  of 
the  Crown,  especially  in  the  Empire,  in  the  constant 
struggle  of  Church  and  State  to  divide  the  forces  of 
the  Church  by  securing  the  help  of  Eome  against  its 
own  clergy,  especially  against  its  prince- bishops. 
Now  in  this  struggle  of  Eome  with  nationalism, 
whether  in  Church  or  State,  the  monk  was  the  ally 
of  the  papacy.  This  alliance  was  made  absolute 
when  the  greatest  of  all  the  popes,  Hildebrand,  though 
not  himself  a  monk,  deliberately  adopted  as  his  own 
the  monkish  ideal  and  forced  celibacy  upon  a  reluc- 
tant priesthood. 

The  reasons  for  this  alliance  are  so  important  as  to 
warrant  more  detailed  examination.  Of  the  three 
elements  in  the  ecclesiastical  framework — bishop, 
pope,  and  monk — the  place  and  power  of  the  episco- 
pal office  was  the  first  established.  The  means 
whereby  this  was  accomplished  fall  without  our 
scope.  We  may  say,  in  brief,  that  on  its  external 
side  it  was  in  part  largely  due  to  the  ruling  ideas 
of  the  Eoman  Empire.  Imperial  Eome,  character- 
istically, added  little  to  doctrine  except,  indeed,  the 
emphasis  of  apostolic  succession  ;  her  work  was  to 
translate  Christianity  into  the  terms  of  her  civil  serv- 
ice, abandoning  theology  to  the  more  subtle  Greek. 


l88  THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK 

Even  before  the  formal  union  of  Cliurch  and  State  by 
Constantine,  the  Church  had  organized  itself,  espe- 
cially in  the  West,  on  the  lines  of  the  Empire.  The 
conquering  Church  took  its  weapons  from  the  arsenal 
of  the  enemy.  In  its  hierarchy  of  religious  pretors 
and  pro-consuls,  each  in  strict  subordination  to  those 
immediately  above  them,  in  its  rigidly  defined  ec- 
clesiastical provinces,  each  divided  into  districts 
(bishoprics)  and  communes  (parishes),  we  have  the 
civil  organization  adapted  to  religious  purposes.  So 
closely  did  the  ecclesiastical  organization  follow  the 
civil  organization,  and  so  firm  was  its  hold  upon 
society,  that  in  the  France  of  the  present  day,  with 
hardly  an  exception,  there  is  a  bishop  wherever  there 
was  a  Eoman  municipality,  and  an  archbishop  wher- 
ever there  was  a  provincial  metropolis. 

With  the  break-up  of  the  civil  administration  un- 
der the  onrush  of  the  barbarians  the  ecclesiastical  or- 
ganization gradually  tended  to  take  its  place.  The 
bishop  was  not  only  an  of&cer  of  the  Church,  he 
became  one  of  the  higher  magistrates  of  the  new 
State ;  by  his  race,  speech,  and  legal  training  pre- 
serving its  continuity  with  the  vanished  Roman  Em- 
pire. A  further  development  should  be  noticed. 
The  rise  of  feudalism,  the  increasing  wealth  of  the 
sees,  above  all  the  system  of  investitures,  with  its  ac- 
companying military  services,  its  homage,  its  implied 
control  by  the  sovereign,  tended  more  and  more  to 
make  the  bishop  a  national  prince.  In  general  he 
owed  his  election  to  the  sovereign  ;  he  became  through 
his  feudal  relationships  the  king's  man.  In  the  seeth- 
ing of  the  nations  which  led  to  the  foundation  of 
modern  Europe  the  bishop,  as  the  count,  would  have 


THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK  189 

drifted  off  into  local  independence  had  not  the  popes 
made  the  bishops  feel  that  the  unity,  orthodoxy,  nay 
the  very  existence  of  the  Catholic  Church  depended 
on  the  due  recognition  of  the  claims  of  Kome. 

If,  on  one  side  of  their  work,  the  tendency  of  the 
episcopate  was  thus  towards  nationalism,  on  another 
the  bishops  and  secular  clergy  were  the  representa- 
tives of  individualism  and  wealth.  When  the  en- 
thusiasm or  policy  of  Constantine  first  allowed  the 
churches  to  hold  property  (321),  the  Church  became 
a  kind  of  universal  legatee.  Hitherto  the  funds  of 
the  clergy  had  consisted  almost  wholly  of  voluntary 
offerings.  They  now  received  not  only  fixed  reve- 
nues, in  some  cases  charged  on  the  land  of  munici- 
palities, but  also  the  ever-growing  estates  which 
superstition  or  piety  bequeathed  for  their  enjoyment. 
In  the  chaos  of  the  times  they  alone  were  not  troubled 
by  forfeiture  or  violence,  while  alienation  was  ren- 
dered impossible  by  a  perpetual  curse.  The  lands 
of  the  conquered  were  divided  by  the  barbarians, 
but  the  estates  of  the  Church  were  guarded  by  the 
terrors  of  superstition.  This  wealth  the  bishop  or 
incumbent  regarded  as  his  own.  It  was  his  for  life  ; 
had  it  not  been  for  the  enforcement  by  Hildebrand 
of  celibacy,  there  was  some  danger  lest  it  should  have 
become  his  to  bestow  on  his  children  as  an  hereditary 
possession. 

Furthermore  the  lesser  bishops  were  in  perpetual 
revolt  against  their  metropolitans.  This  office  and 
power,  swept  away  in  Spain  and  Gaul  by  the  decay 
of  religious  life  or  the  whirlwind  of  conquest,  had 
been  revived  by  Charles  the  Great  as  a  check  upon 
the  growing  disintegration  of  the  Church.     In  their 


IQO  THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK 

efforts  to  elude  this  metropolitan  interference  the 
bishops  flung  themselves  at  first  into  the  arms  of 
Eome.  The  purpose  of  the  False  Decretals,  the  re- 
sponsibility for  which  later  research  has  shown  must 
be  laid  at  their  door,  was  to  provide  an  escape  from 
the  tyranny  of  local  tribunals  by  an  appeal  to  an  au- 
thority to  which  they  trusted  that  distance  would 
give  disinclination  for  vexatious  interference.  By  a 
just  retribution,  this  stupendous  forgery  delivered 
the  episcopate,  it  is  true,  from  metropolitan  tyranny 
only  to  hand  it  over  to  the  stronger  control  of  the 
papacy.  Nevertheless,  the  decentralizing  forces  of 
feudalism  and  racialism  would  have  proved  stronger 
even  than  Eome,  had  it  not  been  that  in  every  land 
the  leanings  of  the  bishops  towards  independent  na- 
tional churches  were  more  than  balanced  by  the  cos- 
mopolitanism of  the  monasteries. 

To  the  monks,  at  any  rate  in  their  earlier  enthu- 
siasms, nationalism  made  no  appeal.  When  they 
fled  to  the  desert  they  were  anxious  to  leave  State 
and  Church  behind  them,  not  to  develop  their  powers. 
From  the  flrst  also  the  monasteries  were  distrusted 
by  the  episcopacy,  whoever  sought  to  bring  them 
under  their  visitation  and  control.  Little,  therefore, 
was  needed  of  papal  encouragement  to  turn  the  monks 
who  had  now  passed  out  of  the  first  rude  hermit-stage 
into  organized  communities  into  the  watch-dogs  in 
every  land  for  the  pope,  ever  ready  to  pick  a  quarrel 
with  the  bishop  and  to  proclaim  against  him  the  su- 
premacy of  their  papal  protector.  With  Gregory 
the  Great  the  granting  to  monasteries  of  exemption 
from  episcopal  oversight  became  a  settled  policy,  and 
was  continued  by  his  successors,  in  spite  of  the  efforts 


THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK  I91 

of  Charles  the  Great  to  check  this  growth  of  a  *^  pe- 
culiar '^  within  the  Church.  So  the  lists  were  set : 
on  the  one  side  the  individualism  of  wealth  and  the 
feudal  localism  of  a  semi-national  episcopacy  ;  on  the 
other  side  the  monks,  by  their  very  constitution 
socialists  and  cosmopolitans.  Until  the  reforms  of 
Benedict  the  political  or  ecclesiastical  influence  of 
the  monks  was  but  slight.  But  with  the  formation 
of  the  world-wide  Benedictine  Order  we  leave  behind 
the  age  of  individual  monasteries  each  fighting  for  its 
own  hand.  Henceforth  the  monks  formed  a  state 
within  a  state,  an  ecclesiastical  internationalism 
whose  head  centre,  under  the  subtle  guidance  of  the 
papacy,  was  Rome.  If  the  bishop  was  the  king's 
man,  the  monk  was  the  pope's  ;  the  course  of  events 
all  tended  to  make  him  such.  If  the  interests  of  the 
one  were  more  national  or  local,  the  sole  care  of  the 
other  was  the  welfare  of  his  monastery,  the  spread  of 
his  order,  and  the  supremacy  in  the  Church  at  large 
of  his  three  vows,  of  community  of  goods, — the 
technical  name  was  ^'poverty," — obedience,  and 
celibacy.  We  need  not  wonder  that,  apart  from  all 
other  causes,  the  inner  mood  of  the  two  orders  was  a 
radical  antagonism. 

II 

Monasticism  in  its  origin  was  the  struggle  after 
two  ideals,  asceticism  and  isolation.  By  birth  it  was 
the  child  of  the  East,  but  there  it  was  not  confined  to 
Christianity  alone.  In  the  Church  it  first  appears  in 
^gypt?  where  the  great  heathen  Serapeum  of  Memphis, 
as  well  as  the  numerous  Jewish  ascetics  called  Thera- 
peutsB,  had  for  centuries  familiarized  the  people  with 


192  THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK 

its  principles.  From  the  East  it  was  introduced  to 
the  West  by  Athanasius  in  a  work  of  extraordinary- 
popularity  called  **The  Life  of  St.  Anthony,"  and 
naturalized  by  Jerome,  who  in  this  as  in  much  else 
formed  the  connecting  link  between  East  and  West. 
But  the  Mouasticism  of  the  West  was  altogether  dif- 
ferent from  its  parent.  In  the  East  the  ideal  life  was 
too  often  a  dreamy  and  barren  quietude.  Her  typ- 
ical saint  was  Simeon  Stylites  (+459),  'Hhe  glory  of 
Antioch,"  who  lived  for  thirty-seven  years  on  a 
column  and  died  without  the  sin  of  descending.  Em- 
perors crouched  at  the  foot  of  his  pillar  while  Simeon 
performed  his  devotions,  touching  his  feet  with  his 
forehead  1,244  times  in  succession  ;  at  this  figure  the 
admiring  eye-witness  lost  count.  Feebler  successors 
of  Simeon  penetrated  deserts  hitherto  inaccessible,  or 
buried  themselves  in  the  darkest  caves.  They  aspired 
to  reduce  themselves  to  the  level  of  the  beast :  of 
some  the  naked  body  was  only  covered  by  their  long 
hair  ;  the  glory  of  others,  called  Boskoi  or  grazing 
monks,  was  their  imitation  of  the  madness  of  Nebu- 
chadnezzar. They  could  be  only  roused  to  activity 
by  some  subtle  theological  argument,  or  for  the  joy 
of  breaking  down  the  temples  and  monuments  of  the 
heathen,  and  killing  the  prophets  of  its  culture. 
Though  Eastern  Monasticism  contained  a  larger 
number  of  well-regulated,  if  at  times  indiscreet,  ad- 
herents than  is  often  supposed,  nevertheless  we  may 
be  thankful  that  it  was  never  successfully  trans- 
planted to  a  colder  Europe.  In  the  Monasticism  of 
the  West  we  meet,  it  is  true,  with  madmen  not  a  few, 
but  as  the  years  passed  on  the  useless  life  of  the 
frenzied  recluse  gave  place  everywhere  to  the  rule 


THE   MONKS  AND   THEIR  WORK  I93 

and  discipline  of  the  convent.  For  the  West  the 
*' patient  deep  disdain"  of  a  ''brooding  East"  for 
the  actual  facts  of  social  life  proved  an  impossibility. 
In  the  West,  in  fact,  the  monk  (inonachos)  ceased  to 
exist  save  as  the  occasional  hermit  or  anchorite.  He 
passed  into  the  brother  of  the  common  life,  the  chief 
feature  of  whose  existence  was  not  so  much  his  isola- 
tion as  his  socialism,  and  whose  vows  of  celibacy  and 
obedience  to  a  spiritual  father  were  the  foundations 
upon  which  rested  the  life  of  the  brotherhood. 

The  emancipation  of  Western  Monasticism  from 
the  baleful  influences  of  the  East  was  the  work  of 
Benedict  of  Nursia  (543).  A  Eoman  of  the  Romans 
Benedict  was  destined  to  give  another  illustration  of 
the  Eoman  genius  for  organization  and  of  its  power 
to  produce  ordered  welfare  out  of  chaos.  Benedict 
at  the  age  of  twenty  began  his  religious  life  as  a 
hermit  in  a  cave  of  Subiaco,  but  his  austerities  and 
conflicts  with  ApoUyon  soon  drew  to  him  ardent  dis- 
ciples. These  he  formed  into  twelve  communities. 
Driven  from  Subiaco  by  an  irruption  of  shameless 
women,  he  transferred  his  flock  to  Monte  Cassino. 
There  he  desecrated  the  temple  of  Apollo,  cut  down 
the  sacred  grove  in  which  rude  peasants  still  sacri- 
ficed to  demons  and  built  in  its  place  the  most  illus- 
trious monastery  of  Christendom.  To  this  he  gave 
in  529  his  famous  Rule.  Its  virtues  were  abstinence, 
silence,  humility,  and  obedience  j  its  duties,  worship, 
reading,  and  manual  labour.  A  fundamental  law 
was  the  absolute  community  of  all  property.  He 
who  reserved  for  himself  even  one  gold  piece  was 
looked  on  as  a  new  Simon  Magus.  Attachment  to 
the  order  was  to  be  the  one  earthly  passion,  an  at- 


194  THE  MONKS  AND   THEIR  WORK 

tachmeut  which  was  rendered  the  stronger  by  the 
vow  which  tied  the  monk  to  his  first  monastery  (sta- 
bilitas)j  thus  putting  an  end  to  the  vagrancy  and 
lawless  individualism  which  had  so  often  brought 
discredit  upon  the  movement  in  the  past.  Benedict 
survived  but  a  few  days  his  sister  Scolastica,  who 
had  adapted  to  her  own  sex  the  work  and  Bule  of 
her  brother.  His  whole  character  is  summed  up  in 
the  inscription  which  the  traveller  may  still  read 
on  the  old  Eoman  tower  at  Monte  Cassino  in  which 
he  dwelt;  Inspexit  et  despexit — '^He  saw  the  world 
and  scorned  it."  Within  two  centuries  of  Benedict's 
death  (21  March,  583)  his  order  had  swarmed  like 
bees  into  every  land  of  the  West.  Even  the  older 
foundations  embraced  his  Eule,  whether  voluntarily 
or  under  pressure  from  the  papacy,  in  preference  to 
their  own  as  a  more  perfect  expression  of  monastic 
life.  The  success  of  the  Bule  was  deserved.  It 
was  not  only  a  masterpiece  of  clearness  and  discre- 
tion, but  marks  the  transition  from  vague  impulses 
to  the  reign  of  law.  Its  quickening  impulse  was 
attested  by  the  founding  of  an  enormous  number  of 
new  monasteries.  From  these  monasteries  there 
poured  out  in  turn  a  stream  of  missionaries  who  not 
only  carried  Christianity  into  the  heart  of  heathen- 
dom, but  at  the  same  time  took  their  monastic  ideals 
with  them.  Thus  every  new  conquest  of  the  heathen 
was  marked  by  the  further  rise  of  Benedictine  ab- 
beys, the  frontier  posts,  as  it  were,  of  the  new  king- 
dom. At  one  time  the  total  number  of  Benedictine 
foundations  in  Western  Europe  was  not  less  than  five 
thousand. 
With  Benedict  the  Monasticism  of  the  East  and 


THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK  195 

West  split  off  forever.  In  the  East  to  this  day,  as 
for  instance  on  Mount  Athos  or  in  the  Coptic  settle- 
ments on  the  Nile,  Monastic! sm,  untouched  by  the 
vivifying  influence  of  Benedict,  remains  much  as  it 
was  in  the  earlier  centuries,  only  more  formal  and 
less,  an  affair  of  the  heart.  It  still  lies,  a  stereotyped 
institution,  outside  the  Church.  In  the  East,  in 
fact,  the  separation  between  the  two  ideals  became 
complete,  a  married  clergy  ^  over  against  a  celibate 
Monasticism  ;  a  divorce  of  ideals  that  in  the  West 
was  prevented  by  Hildebrand.  In  the  East  also  the 
lower  place  of  the  secular  ^  ideal  is  sufificiently  evi- 
denced by  the  fact  that  the  government  of  the 
Church  is  altogether  reserved  for  the  monks ;  the 
married  priests  or  popes,  as  they  are  called,  are  the 
hewers  of  wood  and  the  drawers  of  water.  But  in 
the  West,  monk  and  priest  alike  were  under  the  con- 
trol of  one  supreme  head  of  the  Church,  who  was, 
qua  ruler,  neither  monk  nor  priest  nor  even  bishop, 
but  the  representative,  as  it  was  held,  of  the  Re- 
deemer. 

In  the  East,  the  breach  of  Monasticism  with  cul- 
ture, and  even  with  human  society,  became  com- 
plete. Perched  on  the  summits  of  precipitous  rocks, 
to  which  oftentimes  the  only  access  is  by  means  of  a 

*  The  reader  should  distinguish  between  a  married  clergy,  i.  e., 
married  before  ordination,  and  the  marriage  of  the  clergy.  Thia 
last  was  prohibited  in  the  East  at  an  early  date. 

'  The  early  use  of  the  word  secular  for  the  parish  clergy  shows 
the  influence  of  Monasticism.  Whoever  was  not  a  monk  under 
a  rule  (regula,  regulars),  even  though  a  priest,  was  "of  the 
world."  In  the  Middle  Ages  "religion"  means  the  monastic 
life,  and  "  conversion  "  is  its  adoption. 


196  THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK 

windlass,  a  handful  of  monks  live  out  monotonous 
lives  ignorant  of  the  treasures  which  the  accidents  of 
time  may  have  left  stranded  in  their  libraries,  push- 
ing their  antagonism  to  sex  to  such  a  degree  that 
female  animals  of  every  kind  are  excluded  from 
Mount  Athos.  In  the  West,  Benedictine  monasteries 
became  the  centres  of  civilization  and  of  education, 
the  intellectual  saviours  of  Europe.  In  the  East, 
Monasticism  became  a  stereotyped  institution,  a  bar- 
ren asceticism  without  history  or  contribution  to 
history,  except  in  so  far  as  its  existence  is  the  proof 
that  mere  asceticism  is  not  a  progressive  factor  and 
leads  to  no  higher  results  of  life  and  service.  In  the 
West,  Monasticism  was  for  centuries  the  bulwark 
and  rampart  not  only  of  the  Church  but  of  society 
itself.  Monasticism  in  the  East  retained  its  individ- 
ualistic basis,  and  remained  little  more  than  an  ag- 
gregation of  units,  even  where,  as  in  Eussia,  ecclesi- 
astical government  is  handed  to  it,  its  basis  is  still  so 
individualistic  that  the  episcopate  is  practically 
powerless  against  an  autocratic  Holy  Synod.  In  the 
West,  through  the  influence  of  Benedict,  it  became 
an  organic  whole  wherein  were  maintained  those 
fundamental  virtues  without  which  society  itself 
must  dissolve. 

Ill 

From  this  brief  survey  of  the  position  of  Mon- 
asticism in  the  ecclesiastical  and  political  framework 
we  pass  to  an  estimate  of  its  contribution  to  the 
civilization  of  the  Middle  Ages.  One  matter  which 
will  present  itself  at  once  to  your  mind,  the  influence 
of  Monasticism  upon  education,  will  be  more  con- 
veniently deferred  to  our  next  lecture. 


THE   MONKS  AND   THEIR  WORK  I97 

In  the  spread  of  Western  Monasticism.  we  see  two 
strangely  contrasted  influences  working  together  to 
change  the  aspect  of  Europe.  The  one  was  the  her- 
mit's passion  for  solitude  ;  the  other  the  desire  for  the 
communion  of  saints.  The  passion  for  solitude  drove 
the  monk  into  the  wastes  and  forests  ;  the  love  of  the 
saints,  the  desire  to  imitate  the  life  of  some  famous 
recluse  or  to  gain  the  protection  which  his  founda- 
tion and  reputation  could  afford  against  tyranny  and 
barbarism,  turned  the  lowliest  hermitage  into  a 
crowded  monastery  surrounded  by  a  thriving  de- 
pendency of  serfs  and  tenants.  The  illustrations  of 
this  law  would  be  almost  as  numerous  as  the  mon- 
asteries themselves.  Everywhere  it  was  the  same  ; 
whether  by  the  slopes  of  the  Vosges  or  the  Jura,  in 
the  forests  of  Bavaria,  or  amidst  the  wastes  of  North- 
umberland. Europe  does  not  always  remember  the 
debt  which  she  owes  to  those  who  in  their  longing  to 
escape  from  the  haunts  of  men,  that  they  might  the 
better  save  their  souls,  cleared  the  densest  jungle, 
drained  pestilent  swamps,  and  by  the  alchemy  of  in- 
dustry turned  the  deserts  into  waving  gold.  The 
sanctity  of  the  hermit  drew  after  him  against  his 
will  a  brotherhood  of  disciples,  who,  as  at  Coventry, 
laid  the  foundation  of  our  busiest  towns,  broke  the 
silence  of  waste  and  fen  with  a  chain  of  religious 
houses  (Crowland,  Peterborough),  established  agricul- 
tural colonies  in  the  midst  of  profound  forests  (Ever- 
sham),  or  planted  on  some  dreary  coast,  as  at  Whitby, 
the  forerunner  of  a  busy  haven. 

The  results  of  Monasticism  in  thus  reestablishing 
the  civilized  life  of  Europe  have  often  been  described 
and  need  not  now  detain  us.     But  this  result  was  itself 


198  THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK 

the  effect  of  the  new  conception  of  the  dignity  of  toil 
which  Mouasticism,  as  developed  by  St.  Benedict, 
had  introduced  into  the  West.  In  the  degenerate 
Eoman  world,  as  among  the  rude  barbarian  con- 
querors, manual  labour  had  been  exclusively  re- 
served for  slaves.  In  Eastern  Monasticism,  though 
systematized  work  was  not  unknown,  as  for  instance 
in  the  monasteries  founded  by  Pachomius  in  Egypt, 
where  the  inmates  were  organized  on  the  basis  of 
their  trades,  there  was  too  great  a  tendency  to  identify 
religious  contemplation  with  laziness.  Manual  labour, 
where  it  existed,  was  generally  sedentary.  But  in 
the  Rule  of  Benedict,  manual  labour  formed  an  indis- 
pensable part  in  the  life  of  every  monk,  however 
noble  his  birth.  *' Indolence,''  he  said,  "is  the 
enemy  of  the  soul."  So  he  laid  down  that  in  his 
"school  of  divine  servitude"  six  hours  each  day 
should  be  given  to  manual  toil,  and  two  to  reading. 
Even  on  Sundays  "any  who  shall  be  unable  or  un- 
willing to  read  or  meditate  shall  have  some  work  im- 
posed upon  him."  The  sons  of  Benedict,  generally 
freemen  be  it  remembered, — for  it  was  long  before 
slaves  or  serfs  won  the  right  to  escape  to  the  mon- 
astery— often  men  of  high  degree,  as  they  laboured 
in  the  field  clad  in  the  dress  familiar  to  the  pagan 
world  as  the  dress  of  slaves,  or  took  their  share  in 
the  work  of  the  house,  cooking  the  meals  or  cleaning 
the  rooms,  sanctified  industry  by  consecrating  it  to 
the  lowliest  tasks.  "This  is  a  fine  occupation  for  a 
count,"  sarcastically  exclaimed  Duke  Godfrey  of  Lor- 
raine when  he  found  his  brother  Frederick  washing 
dishes  in  the  kitchen  of  a  monastery.  "  You  are 
right,  duke,"  was  the  answer.     "I  ought  indeed  to 


THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK  199 

think  myself  honoured  by  the  smallest  service  for 
the  Master.^'  Such  tales  might  be  multiplied  in- 
definitely ;  we  may  smile  at  them,  but  their  value 
is  not  the  less  great  in  the  witness  they  give  to  a 
new  ideal  in  the  world.  They  foreshadow  the  ele- 
vation of  labour  into  new  esteem,  the  commencement 
of  that  organized  social  industry  which  in  centuries 
to  come  was  to  destroy  feudalism  itself  and  shift  the 
centre  of  power  to  the  producer  and  toiler. 

The  mere  glorification  of  toil — ^'  laborare  est  orare," 
— the  religious  significance  which  Benedict  wished  to 
give  to  all  work,  was  not  all.  In  one  respect  the 
modern  world  has  swung  back  in  its  moral  stand- 
point from  the  higher  ideal  of  the  monks.  For  theirs 
was  toil  from  which  they  had  eliminated  the  gain  of 
the  individual ;  from  first  to  last  it  was  toil  for  others ; 
for  a  corporation,  if  you  like,  but  after  all  toil  for  a 
corporation  is  more  noble,  because  more  altruistic, 
than  toil  for  self.  Toil  was  no  mere  scramble  for 
pigs^-wash,  to  use  the  contemptuous  phrase  of  Carlyle ; 
it  was  not  that  feverish  hustling  of  modern  life — 
*'each  for  himself  and  the  devil  take  the  hindmost, 
O  ! " — which  is  eating  out  and  destroying  the  best 
elements  of  civilization.  The  toil  of  the  monk  was 
socialistic  both  in  method  and  aim ;  though  its 
socialism,  it  is  true,  in  practice  did  not  look  be- 
yond the  corporation.  But  in  this  limitation  the 
socialism  of  Monasticism  was  not  less  advanced  than 
that  of  modern  Trades  Unionism. 

This  socialism — an  aim  in  all  the  r%des^  however 
individualistic  in  other  respects — Benedict,  by  his 
superior  genius  for  organization,  turned  into  a  factor 
of  immense  importance  in  the  history  of  civilization. 


200  THE   MONKS  AND   THEIR  WORK 

For  a  thousand  years  Europe  witnessed  the  spectacle 
of  organized  communities  where  the  individual  prof- 
ited nothing,  the  community  of  which  he  was  an  in- 
mate gained  all ;  to  the  present  writer  a  higher  moral 
ideal  than  that  which  glorifies  to-day  the  *' Beef- 
kings,"  '*  Oil-kings,"  and  other  vultures  of  modern 
society,  whose  appetite  for  amassing,  for  the  mere 
sake  of  amassing,  is  as  cruel  as  it  is  insatiable. 

Of  almost  equal  value  with  the  exaltation  of  labour 
was  the  emphasis  laid  by  Monasticism  upon  the  virtues 
of  humility  and  obedience  ;  from  the  monastic  stand- 
point the  two  tend  to  become  one,  related  as  cause 
and  effect.  The  man  who  has  nailed  his  inner  self  to 
the  Cross  cannot  be  otherwise  than  humble,  and  will 
show  his  humility  by  his  perfect  obedience.  Hitherto 
obedience  had  been  learned  in  one  school  alone — for 
we  may  neglect  the  obedience  of  the  slave, — the  school 
of  the  army.  Now  men  were  taught  by  a  discipline 
other  than  military  that  the  highest  type  of  life  is 
that  which  learns  both  to  endure  hardship  (poverty),' 
to  deny  oneself,  and  to  obey.  With  humility  and 
obedience  life  in  a  brotherhood  either  becomes  im- 
possible or  degenerate.  It  is  difficult  to  exaggerate 
the  value  of  this  lesson  in  the  peculiar  circumstances 
of  the  times.  Monasticism  was  the  emphasis  of  the \ 
truth  that  without  discipline  there  can  be  no  holiness. ' 
Amid  the  dissolution  of  old  society  and  the  ascend- 
ency of  the  barbarians,  the  lesson  was  once  more  en- 
forced of  the  old  obedience  which  had  made  Eome 
great,  but  in  a  purer,  spiritual  form.  ^' If  thou  art 
truly  the  servant  of  Christ,''  said  Benedict,  ^'let  not 
the  iron  fetter  be  thy  chain,  but  the  chains  of 
Christ.''     But  the  '' chains  of  Christ"  are  always 


THE  MONKS  AND   THEIR  WORK  20I 

the  inner  constraint  of  a  heart  which  can  do  no 
other.  With  all  deductions  that  may  be  made  for  an 
exaggeration  of  obedience  into  a  servile  degradation 
of  will  or  a  negation  of  self-respect — a  tendency  that 
assumed  repulsive  forms  in  Eastern  Monasticism, 
and  that  finally  issued  in  the  West  in  Jesuitism — we 
should  not  ignore  the  value  to  civilization,  in  its 
turbulent  youth,  of  the  Church  proposing  for  the 
reverence  of  mankind  as  the  highest  ideal  of  virtue 
the  life  of  obedience  of  the  soldier  of  Christ. 

Viewing  the  Church  as  a  corporation  the  ultimate 
influence  of  Monasticism  was  not  beneficial.  The 
reason  for  this  takes  us  back  to  its  first  principles. 
The  earlier  monks  were  generally  laymen.  The  move- 
ment, in  fact,  on  one  of  its  sides  was  the  protest  of  the 
individual  soul  against  a  salvation  conditioned  by 
sacerdotalism.  In  its  earliest  forms  the  ideal  of 
Monasticism  lay  outside,  even  opposed  to,  that  of 
the  Church.  We  see  this  clearly  brought  out  in  the 
work  which  more  than  any  other  popularized  Mon- 
asticism, Athanasius'  ' '  Life  of  Anthony. ' '  Anthony, 
the  father  of  all  monks,  is  not  only  a  mere  layman. 
As  Duchesne  owns,  he  neither  goes  to  church  nor  re- 
ceives the  Eucharist  for  years,  and  yet  continues  in 
the  closest  intercession  with  God.  As  another  illus- 
tration we  may  mention  the  provision  of  Gregory  the 
Great  that  no  monk  could  obtain  the  cure  of  souls 
without  thereby  losing  all  his  rights  as  a  monk.  The 
opposition  extended  even  to  entrance  into  the  priest- 
hood. That  stout  advocate  of  Monasticism,  Jerome, 
for  instance,  was  ordained  against  his  will.  Accord- 
ing to  some  accounts  he  always  refused  to  consecrate 
the  elements.     Martin  of  Tours  refused  all  the  efforts 


202  THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK 

of  Hilary  of  Poictiers  to  make  him  a  presbyter.  He 
was  only  captured  and  ordained  by  a  stratagem. 
But  in  the  course  of  time  this  primitive  distinction 
or  opposition  was  lost,  and  the  monk  became  the 
rival  of  the  parochial  clergy.  The  first  cause  of  this 
was  probably  pressure  from  without.  The  bishops 
felt  the  danger  of  communities  of  laymen  growing  up 
within  the  Church  which  proclaimed  to  the  world 
by  their  very  existence  an  opposite,  possibly  even  in 
popular  repute  a  higher,  ideal  of  religious  life  to  that 
sacramental  and  sacerdotal  theory  on  which  their 
episcopal  authority  depended.  But  the  need  of  ordi- 
nation became  absolute  when  the  monasteries  found 
themselves  confronted,  through  the  labours  of  their 
missionaries,  with  the  task  of  bringing  the  new  con- 
verts within  the  organization  of  the  Church.  It  is 
one  of  the  ironies  of  Monasticism  that  though  its  inner 
mood  was  opposition  to  the  episcopate,  yet  through 
its  toils  the  episcopate  was  saved  from  stagnation 
and  received  its  largest  extension.  Nevertheless  the 
monk  who  became  a  bishop  rarely  forgot  that  he  was 
first  a  monk,  and  was  oftentimes  more  anxious  for 
the  welfare  of  his  order  than  for  the  well-being  of  the 
seculars  entrusted  to  him. 

Though  at  first  the  monks  had  entered  into  compe- 
tition with  the  seculars  against  their  will,  in  the 
course  of  centuries  they  did  more  than  compete  :  they 
set  themselves,  as  far  as  the  episcopate  would  allow, 
to  cripple  the  seculars.  By  appropriating  tithes,  by 
stealing  and  even  pulling  down  the  parish  church 
when  they  had  the  chance,  by  substituting  for  the 
rectors  or  parsons  entitled  to  the  tithes  the  cheaper 
service  of  curate  or  vicar,  entitled  only  to  a  bare 


THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK  203 

maintenance,  they  built  up  alike  the  endowment  and 
fabric  of  their  abbeys  at  the  expense  of  the  parish 
and  the  seculars.  In  England  every  ancient  vicarage 
is  a  memorial  of  this  monastic  spoliation.  Though 
the  friars  were  not  guilty  of  such  thefts  yet  by  their 
intrusion  into  the  parishes,  the  greater  zeal  of  their 
preachers,  they  drew  away  the  people  from  their 
parish  priests  in  all  the  larger  towns.  In  the  struggle 
of  the  two  orders  of  seculars  and  regulars  the  cor- 
porate society,  whether  monastery  or  friary,  as  usual 
proved  stronger  than  the  individual,  whether  bishop 
or  parish  priest.  Thus  Monasticism  grew,  crippling 
alike  the  episcopate  and  the  parochial  clergy.  In 
one  of  its  many  aspects  the  Eeformation  was  the 
struggle  of  the  secular  clergy  against  the  regulars, 
an  attempt  to  get  back  their  own,  even  at  the  cost  of 
the  destruction  of  the  most  characteristic  ecclesiastical 
institution  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  student  should 
note  that  this  revival  of  the  influence  and  dignity  of 
the  seculars  first  began  in  the  characteristic  institution 
of  the  secular  church,  the  mediaeval  university.  The 
annals  of  Oxford  and  Paris  for  long  years  are  made 
up  of  the  struggles  of  the  seculars  with  the  regulars, 
chiefly  the  friars,  and  the  growing  success  of  the 
seculars  in  holding  their  own.  Of  this  conflict  the 
typical  representative  at  Oxford  was  John  Wyclif. 

IV 

A  word  should  be  added  about  the  scandals  and 
corruptions  which  sully  the  monastic  record.  Inci- 
dentally the  inquiry  is  of  value  inasmuch  as  it  intro- 
duces the  student  to  the  different  orders  in  Mon- 
asticism.    That    corruptions   often  existed  it  were 


204  THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK 

foolish  to  deny,  though  their  frequency  and  serious- 
ness have  been  largely  exaggerated  by  popular  imagi- 
nation, aided  by  the  circumstances  of  their  suppres- 
sion. Nevertheless,  it  is  incontestable  that  until  the 
end  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  monks  as  a  body 
were  far  better  than  their  age,  better  also  for  the 
most  part  than  the  regular  clergy.  But  if  the  reader 
desires  to  stir  up  the  cesspool  of  evil,  he  will  find 
that  the  decay  of  monasteries  seems  to  obey  certain 
general  rules.  The  first  of  these  laws  is  this  :  Every- 
thing depended,  as  it  depends  in  similar  corporate 
institutions  to-day,  upon  the  character  of  the  head, 
be  he  prior  or  abbot.  We  shall  have  an  illustration 
of  this  in  the  case  of  the  famous  Cluguy.  The  second 
and  greater  cause  of  monastic  decay  was  the  corrupt- 
ing influence  of  wealth.  The  curse  of  wealth  was 
the  greater  in  that  its  possession  was  manifest  dis- 
loyalty to  the  monastic  spirit.  The  first  of  their 
three  vows  was  poverty,  the  total  renunciation  of  the 
world,  whether  the  lust  of  the  eyes  or  the  pride  of 
life.  But  in  spite  of  their  vows,  from  wealth  there 
seemed  no  escape.  No  regulations  which  the  wit  of 
man  could  devise  seemed  able  to  save  a  brotherhood 
of  saintly  toilers  from  entering  into  their  labours. 
The  history  of  Monasticism  is,  in  fact,  the  constant 
repetition  of  the  same  tale.  First  we  have  the  burn- 
ing enthusiast,  seeking  salvation  in  self-denial,  plung- 
ing into  the  wilderness  that  he  may  find  a  solitude 
where  he  may  pray  alone.  There  he  draws  to  him- 
self by  his  reputation  others  of  like  mind,  who  place 
themselves  under  his  direction.  Or  if  he  is  already 
a  monk,  inmate  perhaps  in  some  lordly  abbey,  rich 
in  its  vineyards  and  granaries,  we  see  him,  pricked  to 


THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK  205 

the  heart  by  the  memory  of  the  poverty  of  Christ, 
setting  off  to  found  some  new  convent  where 
he  may  carry  on  in  stricter  fashion  the  primitive 
rule,  where  the  good  seed  shall  no  longer  be  choked 
by  the  multitude  of  riches.  In  a  few  years  his  lonely 
and  humble  abode  becomes  too  strait  for  the  multi- 
tudes who  have  sought  out  this  Jacob's  ladder. 
Wealth  pours  in  ;  the  rude  huts  of  wattle  and  mud 
give  place  to  the  stately  abbey  j  the  humble  church 
becomes  the  soaring  minster.  By  their  care  and 
toil  the  desert  blossoms  as  the  rose,  their  fats  over- 
flow, while  serfs  and  hinds,  attracted  by  the  security, 
build  up  outside  its  walls  the  future  town  which  per- 
petuates its  name.  The  first  dreams  of  poverty  are 
once  more  forgotten ;  all  things  are  ripe  for  some 
new  saint  to  make  a  new  effort  towards  that  primi- 
tive simplicity — the  dream  and  the  despair  of  Mon- 
asticism  during  the  long  centuries  of  its  existence. 
Thus  Monasticism  falls  into  certain  cycles  of  fall  and 
decline,  invariably  followed  by  a  corresponding  rise  ; 
the  ebbs  of  the  monastic  spirit  always  lead  to  the 
flowing  tide  of  a  great  revival.  On  these  revivals  it 
were  well  to  linger  for  a  moment,  not  only  because 
of  the  light  which  they  shed  upon  Monasticism  itself, 
but  also  because  in  them  we  find  the  origin  of  certain 
subdivisions  whose  names  and  special  place  in  the 
ecclesiastical  economy  are  not  always  understood. 

The  first  of  the  great  reforms  originated  with  Bene- 
dict of  Aniane  (d.  821).  He  found  the  Benedictine 
monasteries  in  a  deplorable  state.  Because  of  their 
wealth  many  had  been  alienated  as  fiefs  to  laymen, 
while  in  all  the  monks  were  a  law  unto  themselves, 
though  often  cruelly  oppressed  by  their  superiors. 


206  THE  MONKS  AND   THEIR  WORK 

"With  great  zeal,  and  still  greater  talent  for  organiza- 
tion, he  set  himself  to  revive  and  enforce  the  forgot- 
ten Bule  of  the  founder.  As  superintendent-general 
of  the  monasteries  of  France,  and  with  the  help  of 
Louis  the  Pious  he  succeeded,  in  spite  of  the  opposi- 
tion of  the  dissolute,  in  realizing  his  dreams.  Un- 
fortunately he  attempted  a  rigid  uniformity  which 
turned  even  prayer  and  praise  into  the  products  of  a 
mechanical  mill.  As  the  mechanical  can  never  be 
anything  else  than  short  lived,  within  a  hundred 
years  reform  was  once  more  needful. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  tenth  century  the  monas- 
teries of  Europe  had  once  more  sunk  into  the  lowest 
sloughs  of  degradation — the  ideal  discipline  and  en- 
thusiasm lost.  The  inroad  of  the  Danes  and  Huns, 
the  uncertainty  of  the  times,  the  seething  of  the  na- 
tions, all  this  had  affected  for  evil  the  existing  mon- 
asteries. In  some  the  ancient  rule  had  given  place 
to  the  law  which  seems  to  come  uppermost  in  times 
of  insecurity — ^'Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow 
we  die."  To  counteract  this  decay,  Duke  William 
of  Aquitane,  about  the  year  910,  founded  his  new 
monastery  of  Olugny,  in  Burgundy.  Its  rule  was  the 
strictest  interpretation  of  the  Rule  of  Benedict,  at  first 
almost  an  unbroken  silence.  In  a  few  years  it  be- 
came, next  to  Eome,  the  greatest  centre  of  influence 
in  Europe,  less  because  of  its  wealth  and  splendour, 
though  these  were  enormous, — two  hundred  and 
seventy  estates  were  given  to  it  in  thirty  years  alone, 
— than  because  of  true  saints  whom  it  gave  to  the 
Church  and  the  series  of  able  abbots  by  whom  it  was 
governed.  It  was  Clugny  that  led  the  reform  party 
of  the  eleventh  century  ;  to  Clugny  was  due  the  rescue 


THE  MONKS   AND   THEIR   WORK  207 

and  elevation  of  the  papacy  from  the  awful  abyss 
into  which  it  had  fallen.  Two  of  its  monks  passed 
from  its  cloisters  to  the  chair  of  St.  Peter.  More  im- 
portant than  these  was  the  influence  it  exerted  upon 
one  who  so  completely  adopted  the  ideal  of  Cluguy 
as  the  ideal  he  would  impress  upon  the  whole  Church 
that  historians  have  been  misled  into  supposing  that 
at  one  time  he  had  been  an  inmate  ;  we  refer  to  the  il- 
lustrious Hildebrand.  Popes  and  kings  vied  with  each 
other  in  conferring  honours  on  this  centre  of  reform. 
The  convent  was  acknowledged  to  be  second  only  to 
that  convent  on  Monte  Cassino  where  Benedict  had 
lived  and  died.  Her  abbot  took  his  rank  with  kings  ; 
he  was  ex  officio  a  Eoman  cardinal ;  he  minted  his 
own  coin  ;  by  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  825 
abbeys  looked  up  to  him  as  their  head  ;  by  the  middle 
of  the  twelfth  century  three  thousand  monks  gath- 
ered in  his  chapter  ;  while  nearly  twenty  thousand 
poor  peoi)le  were  relieved  annually  at  his  gates. 
From  the  Cluniac  houses  in  England  alone  a  tribute 
equal  to  £20,000  was  annually  sent  to  the  mother 
abbey.  Her  church  was  the  pride  of  Burgundy,  the 
largest  in  the  world,  aud  its  massive  magnificence 
was  in  keeping  with  its  colossal  dimensions.  Its 
four  hundred  columns  and  hundred  windows  mark 
the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  art. 

The  secret  of  the  Cluniac  reform  lay  in  the  intro- 
duction into  Mouasticism  of  a  new  idea.  The  weak- 
ness of  monasteries  lay  in  their  lack  of  responsibility 
to  some  external  authority.  Such  power  as  there 
was  had  been  sadly  weakened  by  the  papal  policy 
of  granting  exemption  from  episcopal  supervision. 
Each  convent  was  a  law  to  itself.     As  a  consequence, 


208  THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK 

there  were  few  checks  to  prevent  the  fall  of  a  convent 
into  evil  when  once  the  enthusiasm  within  had  been 
lost.  The  Cluniacs  remedied  this  by  the  introduction 
of  what  we  should  call  to-day  the  conuexional  prin- 
ciple. They  formed  so-called  "  congregations ' '  under 
the  leadership  of  Clugny,  monasteries  united  to  guard 
the  common  maintenance  of  the  Rule.  Thus  Mon- 
asticism  passed  through  the  third  stage  of  its  develop- 
ment. The  solitary  monk  had  given  place  to  the 
solitary  community  ;  this  in  turn  became  an  affilia- 
tion of  communities  in  one  international  organiza- 
tion that  looked  to  the  pope  for  support  and  in 
return  gave  him  their  aid. 

By  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century,  Clugny 
had  followed  the  common  round,  and  fallen  from  its 
high  estate  through  its  wealth  and  magnificence.  In 
their  laziness  they  reduced  their  daily  worship  to 
meagre  proportions.  Added  to  this  was  the  rule  of 
the  evil  Pontius  (1109-1122),  who,  on  being  dis- 
possessed by  Pope  Calixtus  II,  scrupled  not  to  make 
war  on  the  monastery  itself,  and  to  melt  down  its 
gold  and  silver  plate,  that  he  might  pay  his  hirelings. 
By  the  decay  of  Clugny  all  things  were  ready  for  a 
new  reform.  In  1098  Robert,  a  nobleman  of  Cham- 
pagne, disgusted  with  the  loose  and  frivolous  life  of 
the  monks  of  Molesme,  a  monastery  he  had  founded 
himself,  had  retired  with  twenty  companions  to 
Citeaux,  in  the  stubborn  desert  of  Champagne. 
There  he  formed  a  settlement  of  seven  hermits, 
bound  to  the  strictest  observance  of  the  ancient  rule. 
Robert  himself  was  compelled  by  the  command  of 
Urban  II  to  return  to  his  original  convent,  but  after 
a  short  struggle  Citeaux  won  its  freedom  from  the 


THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK  209 

bishop,  and  was  placed  under  immediate  papal 
authority.  His  successor  as  abbot  was  an  English- 
man, one  Stephen  Harding  of  Sherborne,  who  had 
wandered  as  a  pilgrim  to  Rome,  but  could  not  satisfy 
the  hunger  of  his  soul  for  a  more  intense  asceticism 
until  he  retired  to  the  desolate  Citeaux,  which  took 
its  name  from  its  stagnant  pools  or  cisterns.  Stephen 
was  the  real  founder  of  the  order,  though  apart  from 
his  drawing  up  of  its  usages  his  success  was  due  not 
so  much  to  himself  as  to  another.  While  he  was 
still  abbot  there  knocked  at  the  door  of  his  austere 
monastery,  in  the  year  1113,  a  youth  of  twenty-two, 
with  thirty  companions.  That  youth  was  the  great 
mediaeval  prophet  and  preacher  St.  Bernard,  by 
whose  extraordinary  enthusiasm  the  order  so  grew 
that  within  forty  years  it  had  founded  one  hundred 
and  sixty  abbeys,  chief  of  which  was  St.  Bernard's 
own  foundation  at  Clairvaux.  The  Cistercians  from 
the  first  resolved  to  dwell  alone.  To  secure  this  end 
their  Eule  forbade  the  erection  of  a  house  of  their 
order  within  a  certain  distance  of  any  monastery. 
This  isolation  resulted  in  England  in  the  preserva- 
tion of  their  ruins.  When  the  Dissolution  came  there 
was  no  neighbouring  town  to  use  the  abbey  as  a 
granary.  In  the  matter  of  polity  Cistercians  or  whito 
monks  represent  the  fourth  development  of  the  mon- 
astic system.  The  Cluniacs  had  fallen  away  because 
they  had  centralized  authority  in  the  abbot  of 
Clugny.  With  the  Cistercians  each  foundation  was 
an  independent  abbey,  and  not  as  in  the  other  orders 
a  subject  priory  of  its  parent.  But  they  kept  up  the 
connexional  spirit  by  enforcing  everywhere  a  unity 
of  usage,  by  an  annual  conference  of  all  the  abbots 


2IO  THE   MONKS  AND   THEIR  WORK 

each  September  at  Citeaux,  and  by  makiug  the 
abbot  of  Citeaux  the  visitor  of  the  order.  To  further 
guard  their  discii^liue,  though  independent  almost 
from  the  first  of  episcopal  authority,  they  yet  bound 
themselves  to  the  pope  by  oaths  of  direct  obedience. 
They  were  thus  the  first  of  the  militant  spiritual 
orders  whose  definite  object  it  was  to  bring  the 
spiritual  world  under  the  government  of  Eome. 
Within  a  hundred  years  this  order,  too,  began  to 
suffer  the  inevitable  internal  decay,  and,  like  the 
others,  to  grow  content  with  the  common  fate  of 
wealth  and  prosperity.  In  Burgundy  they  owned 
the  most  famous  vineyards ;  in  Yorkshire  the  great- 
est sheep-farms.  So  one  monastic  reform  gave  place 
to  another,  each  adding  in  its  turn  to  the  vast  number 
of  monasteries,  but  accomplishing  little  permanent 
change  in  the  life  and  character  of  the  monks  them- 
selves, let  alone  of  the  people  at  large,  all  alike  wit- 
nessing to  the  fact  that  Monasticism  had  outlived  its 
day. 

We  must  bring  this  short  study  of  a  great  sub- 
ject to  a  close.  Monasticism  as  the  great  expression 
of  renunciation  has  passed  away,  along  with  the 
Middle  Ages,  of  which  it  was  the  most  characteristic 
feature  ;  nor  were  its  latter  days  days  of  success.  Into 
the  causes  of  this  downfall  we  cannot  now  inquire. 
Suffice  that,  whether  merited  or  otherwise,  the  down- 
fall, in  England  at  least,  was  complete.  We  stand 
on  another  shore,  and  watch  the  ' '  tired  waves  ''  of  a 
different  ocean  here  and  there  gain  some  '*  painful 
inch.'^  For  us  other  suns  of  hope,  a  different  night 
of  darkness.  Eenunciation  and  solitude  are  not 
fashionable ;  the  gospel  of  Work  is  in  our  marrow  j 


THE  MONKS  AND  THEIR  WORK  211 

we  are  hitclied  on  to  a  mighty  fly-wheel ;  rest  and 
contemplation  are  vanished  arts.  The  world  moves 
on  for  good  or  ill,  yet  every  age,  and  not  by  any 
means  least  the  Monastic  Age,  has  some  lesson  for 
all  time,  souls  in  whom  there  glowed  the  eternal  fire. 
That  the  dead  should  bury  their  dead  is  a  sound  rule 
of  life  ;  nevertheless,  we  should  be  careful  lest,  in 
the  pride  of  life,  we  reckon  as  dead 

**  The  choir  invisible 
Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 

.     .     .     in  scorn 
For  miserable  aims  that  end  with  self." 


LECTURE  VI 

MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL 
IDEALS    AND    METHODS 


LECTURE  VI 

MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 
AND  METHODS 


WE  propose  in  this  concluding  chapter  to 
deal  with  the  task  and  work  of  the  Church 
in  the  Mediaeval  World  in  the  sphere  of 
education.  The  difficulty  was  twofold.  For  educa- 
tion as  such,  the  mediseval  Church  at  the  outset  had 
little  zest.  The  driving  force  in  the  Church  at  the 
dawn  of  the  Dark  Ages  was  too  completely  monastic 
for  the  Church  to  undertake,  except  with  reluctance, 
a  task  which  brought  her  into  contact  with  a  van- 
ished world.  Then  again  in  educational  work  the 
Church  had  neither  experience  nor  equipment.  Only 
slowly,  and  through  many  mistakes,  did  she  master 
her  difficulties.  The  record  of  the  Church  and  edu- 
cation, in  fact,  is  the  record  of  an  immense  loss 
which  it  took  a  thousand  years  to  make  good.  Even 
then  the  loss  was  only  made  good  by  falling  back 
upon  the  older  Roman  and  Greek  culture  which  the 
Church  had  discarded  or  failed  to  use. 

At  the  outset  of  our  study  it  is  important  that  we 
should  remember  that  education  was  altogether  a  new 
duty  for  the  Church.  In  the  days  of  the  Empire  this 
had  not  been  cast  upon  her.     Only  by  a  due  recog- 

216 


2l6        MEDIAEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

nition  of  this  fact  will  the  student  appreciate  rightly 
the  Church's  task  in  mediaeval  times.  There  were 
other  educational  influences  at  work  beside  the 
Church,  many  of  them  of  a  very  interesting  kind. 
But  these  we  must  pass  by  and  confine  ourselves 
strictly  to  our  theme. 

In  the  day  before  its  fall  the  Empire  possessed  a 
splendidly  organized  system  of  schools,  probably 
much  better  than  anything  to  be  found  in  our  own 
schools  down  to  the  time  of  Dr.  Arnold.  This  system- 
atic endowment  of  education  was  begun  by  Vespa- 
sian (+79),  and  extended  to  the  provinces  by  Antoni- 
nus Pius  (+162).  Grammar-schools,  distinguished, 
as  we  gather  from  stray  passages  of  Horace  and 
Juvenal,  by  early  hours  and  a  liberal  use  of  the  cane 
(ferula) J  the  tawse  (scuticd)  and  the  birch  {flagellum\ 
were  to  be  found  in  every  town  of  importance.  If 
we  may  trust  Suetonius,  the  masters  in  these  schools 
received  the  astonishing  salary  of  100,000  sesterces, 
or  4,000  dollars,  while  we  know  that  in  376  the  em- 
peror Gratian  fixed  the  salaries  of  schoolmasters  in 
Gaul  at  twelve  times  the  yearly  pay  of  a  day 
labourer.  Provision  also  for  what  may  be  called 
university  education  was  made  at  Athens,  Alex- 
andria, Eome,  Bordeaux,  Carthage,  and,  at  a  later 
date,  in  Constantinople.  A  system  of  exhibitions 
established  by  Alexander  Severus  (+212)  enabled  the 
''sons  of  the  free-born  poor^'  to  avail  themselves  of 
those  opportunities. 

In  all  these  schools,  in  the  "West  as  well  as  in  the 
East,  Greek  was  taught,  though  it  would  appear  that 
Latin  was  not  always  taught  in  the  Eastern  schools. 
There  should  have  been,  therefore,  no  difficulty  in 


AND  METHODS  217 

the  Greek  Scriptures,  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament, 
securing  its  immediate  readers,  without  need  of 
translation  into  either  Latin  or  a  vernacular.  No 
doubt  the  grammar-schools  of  the  Empire  would 
thus  conduce  to  the  understanding  of  St.  Paul,  and 
the  spread  of  the  Gospel.  But  we  must  remember 
that  in  the  schools  of  the  Empire,  as  in  the  schools 
of  to-day,  there  was  a  wide  difference  between  the 
curriculum  professed  and  the  results.  Greek  might 
be  taught  everywhere  and  have  a  place  on  the  pro- 
spectus, but  schoolboys  are  the  most  conservative  of 
all  human  beings,  and  the  majority  would  profit 
little  by  the  exercises,  at  any  rate  if  we  may  judge 
from  the  confession  by  St.  Augustine  of  his  hatred 
of  **  Greek  literature  in  which  I  was  dipped  as  a 
little  lad."  In  all  probability  the  Greek  taught 
would  rank  with  the  French  taught  in  English 
schools  in  the  last  century — it  would  enable  men  to 
transact  business,  read  correspondence  or  literature, 
indulge  in  travel,  but  would  not  give  any  real  in- 
sight into,  or  relish  for,  Greek  philosophy  or  the 
Greek  spirit.  Thus  the  West,  unlike  the  East,  was 
never  hellenized  and  remained  essentially  Latin, 

The  value  of  the  Greek  tuition  of  the  schools  of  the 
Empire  is  therefore  doubtful.  On  the  other  hand 
there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  serious  consequences  for 
the  Church,  of  the  fact  that  the  teachers  in  the  im- 
perial schools,  until  the  time  of  Constantine,  were 
nearly  all  heathen.  The  names  of  but  few  Christian 
schoolmasters  have  come  down  to  us — I  believe  that 
only  one  occurs  in  the  catacombs  at  Kome,  an  ele- 
mentary teacher  called  Gorgonus.  Tertullian  in  fact, 
though  he  did  not  suggest  that  Christian  children 


2l8        MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

should  be  withdrawn  from  the  schools,  expressly 
rules  out  the  profession  of  a  teacher  as  one  eligible 
for  Christians.  *^  Studying  literature,"  he  writes, 
^'is  allowable,  but  not  teaching,"  advice  equivalent 
to  handing  over  the  schools  to  uncontrolled  pagan 
iufluence.  The  Canons  of  HippolytuSj  on  the  other 
hand,  of  the  same  age,  probably,  as  Tertallian,  are 
more  practical  in  allowing  the  convert  to  teach  on 
condition  of  reciting  a  sentence  of  his  Creed  before 
the  lessoDS  :  '*  Non  est  deus  nisi  Pater  et  Filius  et 
Spiritus  Sauctus."  The  writer  also  urges  that  the 
Christian  teacher  should  use  his  influence,  if  pos- 
sible, to  win  over  some  of  his  heathen  pupils  to  the 
faith  of  Christ. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
Christians  becoming  teachers  in  the  imperial  schools 
were  almost  insuperable.  The  difficulties  in  part 
arose  from  the  subjects  taught.  As  the  name  shows 
the  chief  object  in  the  curriculum  was  ^'grammar," 
i.  e.,  literature  in  the  higher  forms  dominated  by 
Ehetoric.  In  consequence  the  Christian  teacher  was 
face  to  face  with  the  problem  what  to  do  with  the 
indispensable  declamations  on  mythological  subjects. 
To  Augustine  these  seemed  "a  hellish  torrent  of  use 
and  custom  which  sweeps  away  the  sons  of  Eve  into 
that  vast  and  stormy  sea  which  scarcely  they  who 
have  embarked  upon  the  tree  (i.  e.,  the  cross)  can 
pass  in  safety."  Nor  were  the  difficulties  confined 
to  the  school  lessons — the  shower  of  gold  in  the  lap 
of  Danae  and  the  like,  "the  wine  of  error  held  to  our 
lips  by  drunken  teachers."  Holidays  and  payment 
were  alike  associated  with  heathen  rites  and  deities. 
The  first  fee  was  the  due  of  Minerva :  at  the  feast  of 


AND  METHODS  219 

Flora  the  schoolroom  must  be  adorned  with  garlands, 
and  so  forth.  The  necessary  aloofness  of  the  Chris- 
tian teacher  from  most  of  his  boys,  both  in  the  social 
and  the  religious  life,  would  not  make  things  easier. 

To  many  of  you  it  may  seem  strange  that  the 
Church  made  no  attempt  to  supply  a  school  system 
of  its  own.  You  forget  the  age  of  persecution.  Such 
an  attempt  would  have  involved  the  very  identifica- 
tion which  the  most  part  of  Christians  were  anxious 
to  avoid.  The  schoolmasters  were  practically  civil 
servants  ;  they  would  have  brought  the  power  of  the 
State  to  their  rescue,  if  any  effort  had  been  made  to 
supplant  them.  In  any  case  the  school  system  of  the 
Empire  was  too  well  established  and  endowed  for 
any  rival  system  to  succeed  unless  supported  by 
larger  resources  than  the  Church  could  command. 
Whatever  the  cause  the  fact  remains  that  the  Church 
grew  up  amidst  a  wholly  pagan  system  of  education. 
This  it  continued  to  use  with  more  or  less  reluctance. 
The  so-called  catechetical  schools,  of  which  we  hear 
at  Alexandria  and  elsewhere  under  such  scholars  as 
Clement  and  Origen,  were  of  course  not  schools  in 
any  modern  sense  of  the  word,  but  merely  lectures 
to  adult  catechumens  on  the  rudiments  of  the  faith 
given  in  the  church  itself,  or  in  the  baptistery.  One 
set  of  these  catechetical  lectures — the  famous  Didache 
or  Teaching  of  the  Apostles^  is  still  extant.  But  at 
any  rate  until  the  year  362,  when  the  emperor  Julian, 
in  his  hatred  of  the  Galilian,  closed  the  public  schools 
of  the  Empire  to  all  Christians,  we  hear  nothing  of 
any  attempt  of  the  Church  to  set  up  a  rival  system 
of  her  own. 

From  these  facts  certain  consequences  followed  of 


220        MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

the  greatest  moment.  In  the  first  place  the  Church 
when  called  upon  to  face  the  problem  of  education 
was  altogether  without  the  guide  of  experience. 
This,  perhaps,  would  not  have  mattered  had  it  not 
been  for  the  growing  divorce  between  the  Church 
and  the  culture  of  the  ancient  world.  Through  this 
antagonism  she  cut  herself  off  from  making  the  use 
she  might  have  done  of  the  past.  At  a  very  early 
date,  as  we  see  from  that  stout  opponent  of  Christi- 
anity, Celsus,  many  Christians  began  to  doubt  the 
wisdom  of  studying  pagan  literature.  In  the  third 
century  Clement  of  Alexandria  and  his  friends  were 
almost  alone  in  their  plea  for  Greek  culture.  Greg- 
ory of  Nazianzus,  in  his  oration  on  his  friend 
St.  Basil,  delivered  about  382,  speaking  of  the  life 
that  he  and  his  friend  had  led  when  at  Athens,  is 
forced  to  own  that  ' '  many  Christians  abhor  external 
culture  as  mischievous  and  dangerous,  and  keeping 
us  afar  from  God."  Even  the  plea  of  St.  Augustine 
that  "all  branches  of  heathen  learning  contain  also 
liberal  instruction  adapted  to  the  use  of  the  truth  " 
was  unable  to  stem  the  tide  that  had  set  in  strong 
against  the  former  culture.  In  the  fifth  century  the 
hostility  of  the  Church  to  pagan  literature  became 
fixed.  We  have  all  heard  of  Gregory  the  Great's 
famous  letter  to  Bishop  Desiderius  of  Vienne  : 

<*  A  report  has  reached  us  which  we  cannot  mention 
without  a  blush,  that  thou  expoundest  grammar  to 
certain  friends ;  whereat  we  are  so  offended  and  filled 
with  scorn  that  our  former  opinion  of  thee  is  turned 
to  mourning  and  sorrow.  The  same  mouth  singeth 
not  the  praises  of  Jove  and  Christ.     ...     If,  here- 


AND  METHODS  221 

after,  it  be  clearly  established  that  the  rumour  which 
we  have  heard  of  thee  is  false,  and  that  thou  art  not 
applying  thyself  to  the  idle  vanities  of  secular  learn- 
ing, we  shall  render  thanks  to  God,  who  hath  not 
delivered  over  thy  heart  to  be  defiled  by  the  blas- 
phemous praises  of  secular  men." 

We  must  beware  UDless  we  either  unduly  exag- 
gerate or  whittle  away  the  significance  of  this  letter. 
The  influence  of  the  grammar-school  was  too  deep 
and  permanent  not  to  leave  its  mark  on  the  Church. 
To  the  Fathers  of  the  Western  Church  Vergil,  gen- 
erally speaking,  was  familiar,  while  in  the  East  the 
same  might  be  said  of  Homer.  Gregory  himself  had 
been  brought  up  in  a  grammar-school,  and  always 
recognized  the  advantages  of  classical  studies  for  the 
young.  What  he  objected  to  was  that  a  bishop  should 
teach  Vergil  instead  of  attending  to  his  spiritual 
duties.  Nevertheless  the  letter  shows  that  among 
the  clergy  of  the  Church,  even  before  the  worst  del- 
uge of  the  barbarians,  the  standard  of  education  was 
not  high.  Culture  was  looked  upon  as  something 
external  from,  and  alien  to,  spirituality.  As  the 
Didascalia  informs  us,  even  bishops  in  the  third 
century  were  often  unlearned  men,  while  according 
to  Sir  W.  Eamsay  "the  Greek  of  the  Christian  in- 
scriptions is  undoubtedly  worse  than  that  of  ordinary- 
pagan  epitaphs. '^  But  it  is  not  so  much  in  the 
enumeration  of  special  instances  of  illiterateness  that 
we  notice  the  effects  of  this  divorce,  as  in  the  growth 
in  the  Church  itself  of  an  atmosphere,  largely  monas- 
tic in  origin,  that  was  fatal  to  the  survival  of  the  old 
culture.    So  when  the  barbarian  flood  overwhelmed 


222        MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

Europe,  though  the  Church  survived,  classical  culture 
for  the  most  part  perished.  Only  here  and  there  in 
the  waste  of  waters  was  there  found  some  islet,  an 
enlightened  monastery  or  collegiate  church,  where 
the  older  civilization  still  maintained  a  precarious 
existence.  If  the  Church  and  the  school  system  of 
the  Empire  had  been  less  antagonistic  or  more  cor- 
related, the  triumph  of  the  Church  over  the  barbari- 
ans would  have  carried  with  it  the  triumph  of  the 
classical  heritage  of  humanity,  and  the  story  of  the 
Dark  Ages  would'  have  been  strangely  different.  As 
it  was  when  in  the  eighth  century  Charles  the  Great 
once  more  began  to  reconstruct  the  school  system  of 
his  new  Empire,  he  could  find  little  outside  the 
Church  on  which  to  build.  So  there  grew  up  a  new 
system  of  clerical  education  which  retained  the  name 
of  grammar-schools,  but  which  had  few  other  survi- 
vals in  common  with  the  classical  system  that  had 
been  destroyed. 

In  another  direction  there  was  less.  In  addition 
to  the  grammar-schools  there  were  also  in  the  chief 
cities  of  the  Empire  a  few  advanced  schools, — second- 
ary schools  would  not  be  a  correct  designation — in 
which  the  curriculum  was  confined  to  rhetoric.  These 
rhetoric  schools  set  the  standard  for  all,  so  that  the 
great  object  of  the  schoolmaster  became  the  turning 
out  of  orators  and  barristers.  Music  was  regarded 
by  Quintilian  as  chiefly  a  form  of  voice  training ; 
mathematics  were  of  value  to  the  barrister  as  enabling 
him  to  deal  with  sums  of  money,  while  the  use  of  the 
fingers  in  calculating  would  train  him  in  a  graceful 
use  of  the  hands.  History  was  studied  as  a  form  of 
narrative    rhetoric;  pedantic  accuracy  was  but  of 


AND  METHODS  223 

secondary  moment  compared  with  a  pleasing  style 
— a  conception  of  history  that  was  only  slowly  elimi- 
nated, if  indeed  in  some  quarters  it  has  not  still  a 
hold.  The  consequences  for  the  Church  of  the 
predominance  of  these  rhetoric  schools,  with  their 
windy  and  unreal  declamations, — ^Ualk-markets,'' 
as  St.  Augustine  called  them,  **  in  which  boys  buy 
lies  and  tricks  for  the  war  in  the  courts," — were  as 
serious  as  they  were  lasting.  When  the  school  sys- 
tem of  the  Empire  was  destroyed,  the  spirit  of  its 
curriculum  lived  on  and  dominated,  under  another 
form,  which  was  yet  not  another,  the  revived  learn- 
ing of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  result  was  fatal.  In 
all  ages  theological  imagination  needs  the  careful  re- 
straint of  a  scientific  spirit ;  in  the  early  years  of  the 
Church  there  was  nothing  whatever  to  hinder  rhet- 
oric, both  in  pulpit  and  pamphlet,  running  away 
with  reason.  If  only  the  school  systems  of  the  Em- 
pire had  laid  more  insistence  upon  observation  the 
literary  and  theological  writings  of  the  early  Church 
might  have  been  less  rhetorical ;  on  the  other  hand, 
they  would  have  been  more  living  because  more  real. 
To  this  absence  of  contact  with  reality,  the  fatal,  per- 
sistent heritage  of  Eoman  education,  we  owe  both  the 
unreality  of  much  Scholasticism  as  also  the  later  an- 
tagonism between  Eeligion  and  Science. 

II 

Hitherto  we  have  dealt  with  the  loss  of  the  world 
in  the  sweeping  away  of  Eoman  schools  and  educa- 
tion. We  have  noted  that  this  loss  was  accentuated 
by  the  inexperience  of  the  Church  in  all  scholastic 
matters,  and  above  all  by  the  growth  in  its  ranks, 


224        MEDIAEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

under  the  stress  of  Monasticism  in  its  earliest,  un- 
regulated forms,  of  a  spirit  antagonistic  to  culture. 
We  now  turn  to  the  constructive  task  of  the  Church. 

Any  study  of  the  Church's  influence  in  medieeval 
education  divides  itself  into  three  parts  :  Monasteries 
and  education  ;  the  cathedral  and  collegiate  school ; 
and  the  rise  of  the  universities.  These  were  the 
three  successive  phases  in  which  the  Church's  edu- 
cational activities  found  their  chief  expression.  Our 
scanty  survey  must  of  course  be  limited  to  the  main 
outlines  of  a  vast  topic.  Extraneous  influences  of 
much  interest  must  be  passed  by,  and  our  attention 
fixed  upon  the  work  of  the  Church. 

We  begin  with  the  monasteries.  In  the  dark  ages 
of  the  world,  from  the  sixth  to  the  tenth  centuries, 
when  schools  were  few  and  learning  almost  extinct 
in  Western  Europe  the  Benedictine  and  Irish  mon- 
asteries supplied  the  place.  Probably  this  was  the 
last  thing  that  Benedict  of  Nursia  dreamed  of,  in 
spite  of  the  provision  that  he  made  for  daily  reading 
''for  edification,"  especially  during  meals.  As 
Montalembert  owns,  "Benedict  never  dreamed  of 
regenerating  anything  but  his  own  soul.'^  Tlie  close 
connection  which  for  so  many  centuries  existed  be- 
tween the  Benedictines  and  learning  was  really  due, 
in  the  first  place,  to  a  contemporary  of  Benedict, 
Magnus  Aurelius  Cassiodorus.  This  remarkable 
man,  at  one  time  chief  minister  to  the  Ostrogothic 
princess  of  Italy,  was  born  at  Squillace  in  470.  His 
grandfather  had  delivered  Sicily  from  the  Vandal  in- 
vaders under  Genseric  ;  his  father  had  been  employed 
by  Pope  Leo  in  the  embassy  in  451  which  diverted 
Attila  from  his  purpose  of  marching  on  Eome.     He 


AND   METHODS  225 

himself  for  many  years  served  Theodoric  the  Goth  as 
tutor  and  minister.  On  the  triumph  of  Belisarius, 
Cassiodorus  finally  withdrew,  about  540,  from  public 
life  and  founded  the  monastery  of  Viviers  in  Brut- 
tium.  *'  It  is  more  noble,''  he  cried,  *'  to  serve  Thee, 
O  Christ,  than  to  reign  over  the  kingdoms  of  the 
world."  But  the  energies  of  Cassiodorus  were  not 
satisfied  with  the  ordinary  pursuits  of  monastic  life. 
As  minister  of  the  Goths  he  had  watched,  with  the 
bitter  grief  of  the  Eoman,  the  splendours  of  antiquity 
falliug  into  hopeless  decay  ;  as  a  private  man  he 
would  do  what  he  could  to  save  what  he  might.  So 
while  he  built  a  home  for  his  hermits  on  the  summit 
of  the  mountain,  at  the  foot  there  sprang  up  under 
his  guidance  a  colony  devoted  to  learning.  This 
colony  he  endowed  with  his  own  fine  library,  at  the 
same  time  training  monks  in  the  transcription  of 
manuscripts.  The  date  of  his  death  is  uncertain 
(575  ?)  ;  itself  a  sign  of  the  neglect  by  posterity  of  one 
of  the  greatest  benefactors  of  civilization.  For  the 
system  of  which  he  was  the  founder  took  root  and 
spread  beyond  the  boundaries  of  Italy,  so  that  the 
establishment  of  a  Scriptorium  and  the  multiplication 
of  mauuscripts  became  gradually  as  much  a  recog- 
nized employment  of  monastic  life  as  prayer  or  fast- 
ing or  ih^  tilling  of  the  fields  ;  nor  is  it  too  much  to 
say  that  on  this  account  alone  a  statue  of  Cassiodorus 
deserves  an  honourable  niche  in  every  library. 

To  Cassiodorus  and  the  impulse  he  gave,  more  than 
to  any  other  man,  must  we  assign  the  credit  for  show- 
ing the  new  Benedictine  monasteries,  which  so  rap- 
idly sprang  up  all  over  Europe,  the  more  excellent 
way  of  serving  in  the  preservation  and  dissemination 


226        MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

of  such  learning  and  culture  as  had  survived  the 
welter  of  the  times.  The  story  of  the  services  to 
Europe  in  this  matter  of  the  Benedictine  monasteries 
is  an  oft-told  tale.  The  schools  they  founded,  the 
libraries  they  gathered  together,  the  writers  on  every 
branch  of  knowledge  and  culture  then  known  to  the 
world  that  they  furnished,  the  manuscripts  they 
copied,  thus  preserving  priceless  treasures  that 
would  otherwise  have  been  assuredly  lost,  the  chron- 
icles of  contemporary  history  they  compiled,  all  this 
is  a  familiar  theme, — by  none  told  more  eloquently 
or  with  an  enthusiasm  which  almost  excuses  his  in- 
accuracy, than  by  Count  Montalembert — upon  which 
we  cannot  dwell.  Ignorance  may  scorn,  but  a  more 
humble  wisdom  will  ever  realize  the  debt  it  owes  in 
the  preservation  of  culture  to  the  mediaeval  monks 
from  the  sixth  to  the  twelfth  centuries,  especially  in 
the  days  when  the  enthusiasm  of  their  piety  was  as 
yet  unspoilt  by  their  wealth. 

But  we  must  equally  beware  of  rushing  to  the  other 
extreme,  and  so  attribute  to  mediaeval  monasteries, 
especially  in  later  ages,  educational  activities  which 
were  altogether  alien  to  them.  Monasteries  were 
never  university  colleges,  either  in  intention  or  prac- 
tice. Monte  Cassino  might  be  rebuilt  by  Greek 
artists  and  furnished  with  a  great  library  ;  St.  Gall 
and  other  monasteries  might  boast  of  their  wealth  in 
manuscripts,  but  these  treasures  were  for  their  own 
use.  Much  nonsense  also  has  been  written  about 
monastic  schools.  Lechler,  for  instance,  in  his  monu- 
mental **  Life  of  Wyclif "  spends  many  pages  in  the 
search  for  the  monastic  school  at  which  Wyclif  might 
have  been  educated.     By  some  writers  the  origins  of 


AND  METHODS  227 

Cambridge  have  been  traced  to  the  monks  of  Ely,  of 
Oxford  to  the  monks  of  St.  Frideswide's.  The  stu- 
dent must  not  be  misled  by  these  current  exaggera- 
tions. It  is  true  that  from  the  seventh  to  the  eleventh 
century  such  intellectual  light  as  there  was  had  been 
confined,  in  the  main,  to  the  regulars,  if  among  them 
we  count  the  new  colleges  of  canons  instituted  by 
Charles  the  Great.  But  that  light  was  rather  the 
shining  of  a  few  stars  in  a  waste  of  darkness  than  the 
flush  of  dawn.  In  the  majority  of  monasteries  the 
monks  for  the  most  part  were  illiterate,  and  the  mon- 
astic school  a  small  and  very  restricted  affair.  With 
the  eleventh  century  the  spirit  of  new  hopes  moved 
on  the  face  of  the  waters.  Here  and  there  amid  the 
welter,  dry  land  began  to  appear  ;  here  and  there  a 
keener  eye  might  discern  the  first  shoots  of  verdure. 
As  the  nations  emancipated  themselves  from  the 
struggle  for  existence,  as  the  roving  spirit  of  the 
Normans,  then  later  the  influence  of  the  Crusades, 
brought  the  West  into  contact  with  the  East,  men 
discovered  some  of  the  buried  treasures  of  the  past. 
From  the  Jewish  schools  of  Spain,  and  the  Arabic 
culture  of  Bagdad  and  Cordova,  travellers  like 
Adelard  of  Bath  (1140)  brought  back  the  first  rudi- 
ments of  the  physical  and  mathematical  sciences, 
while  Salerno  revived  once  more  the  study  of  medi- 
cine. Italy,  where  the  break  between  antique  civili- 
zation and  mediaeval  development  had  been  less  dis- 
astrous, asserted  her  humanistic  influences.  Every- 
where men  roused  themselves  from  the  long  night  of 
darkness,  and  with  the  vigour  of  the  newly  awakened 
flung  themselves  into  the  pursuit  of  truth,  or,  rather, 
into  the  study  of  the  survivals  of  the  past.    Chris- 


228        MEDIAEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

tendoui  hailed  with  enthusiasm  the  new  power  of 
mind,  as  the  hope  of  a  world  hitherto  ruled  by  brute 
force  tempered  by  superstition. 

The  new  intellectual  activity  at  first  concentrated 
itself  round  the  old  centres.  Some  of  these  were 
secular  churches ;  others  were  famous  Benedictine 
monasteries.  But  the  defect  of  Mouasticism  was  its 
essential  selfishness.  Educational  usefulness  was  no 
part  of  its  real  programme ;  though  the  education 
provided  was  generous  in  its  way,  nevertheless  it 
bore  the  stamp  of  being  an  ^' extra."  The  school  for 
the  monks  (schola  interior)  and  for  outsiders  (schola 
exterior)  were  kept  strictly  apart,  and  of  course  the 
first  concern  of  the  monastery  was  for  its  own  in- 
mates. The  majority  also  of  those  who  attended  the 
schola  exterior  were  desired  to  become  secular  priests, 
though  a  few  laymen  of  rank  might  be  admitted. 
Daring  the  twelfth  century,  for  various  causes,  the 
monasteries  one  by  one  closed  their  schools  to  all  but 
their  own  novices,  a  course  for  which  they  might 
seek  justification  in  the  rapid  rise  of  the  more  un- 
restricted schools  of  the  cathedral  and  other  collegiate 
foundations,  though  the  real  reason  was  the  loss  of 
their  vital  force.  The  rapidity  of  the  change  was 
remarkable.  In  Anselm  we  have  the  greatest  of 
monastic  teachers ;  half  a  century  later  in  Abailard 
higher  education  had  abandoned  the  monastery  for 
the  cathedral  school  of  Notre  Dame.  A  few  years 
later,  after  the  death  of  Abailard,  we  see  the  rise  in 
Europe  of  the  universities,  which  owed  nothing  to 
the  monks,  to  whose  whole  spirit  they  were  opposed 
and  alien.  In  the  thirteenth  century,  it  is  true,  the 
intellectual  leaders  of  Europe  were  the  friars  j  but 


AND   METHODS  229 

the  great  wave  of  enthusiasm  and  culture  of  which 
they  were  both  cause  and  result,  passed  the  older 
houses  by.  The  Cistercians,  for  instance,  never  made 
any  provision  for  schools  at  all,  except  for  their  own 
novices.  In  the  fourteenth  century  the  monasteries 
contributed  nothing  to  the  intellectual  work  of  the 
age  J  they  neglected  their  chronicles  ;  in  some  cases, 
as  we  know  from  the  reports  of  Leland,  they  even 
sold  their  libraries.  All  monastic  schools  for  out- 
siders had  been  closed,  though  sometimes  the  monks 
continued  to  be  the  trustees  of  certain  educational 
endowments.  Of  the  new  universities  they  made 
little  use,  save  to  send  a  few  selected  inmates  to 
study  law  with  a  view  to  the  control  of  their 
properties  or  their  interminable  lawsuits  with  bishop 
or  townsman.  At  the  time  of  the  Eeformation 
monasteries  were  characterized,  with  rare  exceptions, 
with  a  complete  intellectual  stagnation,  which  was 
one  cause  of  their  fall.  But  three  centuries  before 
the  Dissolution  they  had  outlived  their  educational 
usefulness. 

Ill 

The  educational  work  of  the  Church  was  by  no 
means  confined  to  the  monastery,  even  in  the  Dark 
Ages,  though  the  cathedral  school  has  rarely  re- 
ceived adequate  recognition.  In  England,  at  any 
rate,  the  introduction  of  Christianity  and  the  rise 
of  the  cathedral  school  were  coeval  events.  The 
reason  for  this  should  be  clearly  understood.  What- 
ever other  institutions  in  Eoman  Britain  may  have 
survived  its  conquest  by  the  Saxons,  churches  and 
schools  were  swept  away.     So  when  the  work  of  the 


230        MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

Church  was  begun  afresh  it  was  necessary  to  re- 
establish the  schooL  For  the  language  of  the  Church, 
in  which  all  its  ceremonies  were  performed,  its  sacra- 
ments administered,  its  laws  and  Scriptures  written, 
was  Latin,  hallowed  by  five  hundred  years  of  use. 
The  modern  missionary  makes  it  his  first  task  to 
translate  his  Scriptures,  prayers,  hymns,  and  usages, 
into  the  vernacular  of  the  heathen — but  Augustine, 
the  apostle  of  England,  imposed  upon  the  Saxons 
the  Eoman  service  in  the  Eoman  tongue.  We  may 
rejoice  that  he  did  so.  The  barbarians  who  had 
invaded  Gaul  and  Italy  had  adopted  the  Latin 
language ;  the  Saxons  in  their  conquest  of  Eoman 
Britain  had  retained  their  Teutonic  speech.  If 
therefore  St.  Augustine,  after  the  modern  method, 
had  adapted  himself  to  the  people  England  would 
have  been  cut  off  from  all  the  culture  of  Gaul  and 
Italy,  and  enclosed  within  its  sea-walls  would  have 
remained  a  barbarian  race.  The  example  of  St. 
Augustine  was  followed  at  a  later  date  by  the  pioneer 
English  and  Irish  missionaries  in  Germany  and  other 
Teutonic  lands. 

The  imposition  of  the  Latin  tongue  in  the  service 
of  the  Church  was  not  the  only  result  of  England^  s 
conversion  by  a  Eoman  monk.  The  Church  in 
England  or  Germany  was  faced  with  exactly  the 
same  problem  as  now  confronts  the  missionary  in 
India  or  China.  If  the  Church  were  not  to  remain 
altogether  an  alien  institution,  native  converts  must 
be  educated  for  its  ministry,  and  some  of  the  upper 
classes,  at  least,  be  taught  the  language  of  the  Church 
and  of  Western  culture.  Thus  the  missionary,  who 
brought  his  service-book  or  Vulgate  in  one  hand, 


AND  METHODS  231 

was  bound  to  bring  the  Latin-grammar  of  Priscian  or 
Donatus  in  the  other.  So  the  grammar-school  be- 
came in  theory,  as  it  often  was  in  fact,  the  necessary 
ante-room  of  the  Church.  The  oldest  school  in  Eng- 
land, still  flourishing  at  Canterbury  under  the  title 
of  the  King^s  School,  is  the  grammar-school  con- 
nected with  the  first  English  Cathedral,  and  probably 
established  by  Ethelbert  the  king  and  Augustine  the 
missionary  in  the  spring  of  598.  This  school,  as  Bede 
informs  us,  became  the  model  upon  which  other 
grammar-schools  were  founded  in  connection  with 
new  missionary  sees.  Some  of  these  schools,  e.  g.^ 
Aldhelm's  school  at  Sherborne,  founded  in  705, 
survive  to  this  day  though  often  under  titles  that 
hide  their  antiquity.  The  most  noted  of  these 
schools  was  the  school  at  York  of  which  the  famous 
Alcuin  was  the  master,  until  he  was  persuaded  by 
Charles  the  Great  to  become  the  head  of  his  palace 
school  at  Aachen.  This  school  at  York  Alcuin's 
successor,  Ethelbert,  turned  into  the  first  English 
boarding-school. 

But  the  activity  of  the  Church  was  not  confined  to 
the  establishing  of  a  few  grammar-schools.  Even 
more  numerous  were  their  song-schools.  As  early  as 
the  year  635  we  hear  of  a  certain  James  the  Deacon 
at  York  who,  according  to  Bebe,  *' acted  as  master 
to  many,  chanting  after  the  Eoman  or  Canterbury 
fashion  " — in  other  words  James  established  at  York 
a  song-school  in  which  converts  were  taught  to  chant 
the  services  after  the  Georgian  as  distinct  from  the 
Ambrosian  manner.  We  hear  also  of  a  song-school 
at  Eochester  in  Kent,  established  by  one  Putta,  who 
in  675  went  about  Mercia,  **  teaching  the  songs  of  the 


232        MEDIAEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

Church,  wherever  he  was  asked."  A  greater  in- 
fluence than  Putta's  was  that  of  one  of  the  most 
eminent  of  the  archbishops  of  Canterbury,  the  learned 
Greek,  Theodore  of  Tarsus.  Soon  in  all  the  greater 
churches  we  find  established  side  by  side  the  twin 
schools  of  grammar  and  song.  The  two  schools, 
though  sometimes  united  in  small  places  under  one 
master,  in  the  larger  towns  were  distinct  in  teaching 
and  government,  the  song-school  being  the  elemen- 
tary school,  and  the  grammar-school  the  secondary 
school.  Nor  must  we  forget  that  the  cathedral 
grammar-school,  through  the  duties  imposed  upon  it 
of  the  education  of  candidates  for  the  priesthood, 
performed  also  many  services  now  discharged  by  the 
university  of  the  ecclesiastical  seminary. 

We  have  mentioned  the  schools  attached  to  collegi- 
ate churches.  In  these  churches,  for  the  most  part 
established  in  the  larger  towns,  the  clergy  lived  to- 
gether, or  formed  a  guild  or  club  {collegium),  in  part 
for  the  sake  of  discipline,  in  part  for  the  concentra- 
tion of  resources,  in  part  to  secure  the  traiuing  of  the 
younger  clerics.  The  members  of  these  communities 
were  called  ^'canons,"  from  a  late  Latin  word  for  a 
fixed  contribution  of  corn  available  for  distribution, 
and  the  portions  which  such  canons  received  were 
called  *' prebends.'^  They  lived  together  under  7mles 
based  in  the  main  on  certain  sermons  written  by  St. 
Augustine  in  which  he  described  the  common  life  he 
lived  with  his  clergy  at  Hippo.  Hence  the  name  by 
which  they  were  called  of  Austin  Canous.  At  the 
close  of  the  eighth  century,  under  the  influence  of 
Chrodegang,  bishop  of  Metz  (+766),  these  collegiate 
churches  were    multiplied    and  reformed.     Charles 


AND  METHODS  233 

the  Great  determined  to  make  these  colleges  of  clergy 
educational  centres,  and  one  of  the  canons  was  desig- 
nated ' '  chancellor ' '  or  schoolmaster  for  this  very 
purpose — a  name  now  limited  to  the  educational 
heads  of  our  universities  and  to  great  politicians. 
One  of  the  chancellor's  duties  was  ^  *  to  correct  the 
reading  books,"  to  see  to  their  binding  and  recopy- 
ing.  With  the  death  of  Charles  the  Great  many  of 
these  collegiate  churches  disappeared,  but  others  sur- 
vived to  do  good  educational  work.  In  some  of  the 
larger  collegiate  churches,  the  school  of  the  chancel- 
lor became  a  school  of  theology, — for  whose  teaching 
the  chancellor  was  primarily  responsible, — existing 
side  by  side  with  the  grammar-school  and  the  day- 
school. 

We  may  add,  in  passing,  that  in  schools  of  every 
sort,  whatever  else  was  retained  or  lost  of  Eoman 
methods,  the  use  of  the  cane  was  regarded  as  essen- 
tial. Thus  we  are  told  of  St.  Hugh  of  Lincoln  that 
when  only  seven  years  of  age  ' '  the  pedagogue's 
scourge  in  such  wise  plied  upon  his  back  that  his 
virtues  outstripped  his  vices."  When  Heloise's 
uncle  entrusted  her  to  Abailard's  tuition — with  the 
fatal  consequences  which  have  made  her  immortal — 
he  particularly  enjoined  Abailard  to  flog  her  well  if 
she  proved  lazy  !  Anselm  of  Canterbury  was  almost 
alone  in  pleading  for  gentler  methods  of  instilling 
knowledge.  The  story  is  well  known  of  his  inter- 
view with  the  prior  who  had  come  to  Bee  to  pour  out 
his  woes.  He  could  make  no  impression  on  the  lads 
who  were  being  trained  at  his  monastery.  *'What 
are  we  to  do  with  them  ?  "  he  cried  in  despair  ;  "  we 
do  not  cease  beating  them  day  and  night  but  they  get 


234        MEDIiEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

worse.^^  *^What  do  your  scholars  turn  into  under 
this  ceaseless  beating  ?  "  asked  Anselm.  *  *  They  turn 
only  brutal,"  was  the  reply.  **  You  have  bad  luck,^* 
was  the  keen  answer, 

"in  a  training  which  only  turns  men  into  beasts. 
You  try  blows  and  stripes  alone  to  fashion  them  to 
good.  Did  you  ever  see  a  craftsman  fashion  a  fair 
image  out  of  a  plate  of  gold  or  silver  by  blows  alone  ? 
Does  he  not  with  his  tools  now  gently  press  and  strike 
it,  now  with  wise  art  still  more  gently  raise  and  shape 
it  ?  Tell  me,  my  lord  abbot,  if  you  planted  a  tree 
in  your  garden,  and  tied  it  in  upon  all  sides  so  that  it 
could  not  stretch  forth  its  branches,  what  sort  of  a 
tree  would  it  turn  out  when  you  gave  it  room  to 
spread  ?  Would  it  not  be  good  for  nothing,  full  of 
tangled  and  crooked  boughs?  And  whose  fault 
would  this  be  but  yours,  who  had  put  such  constant 
constraint  upon  it?  Adapt  yourself,"  he  concluded, 
*'  to  the  weak  as  well  as  the  strong,  and  by  Divine 
grace  you  will  win  them  all  to  God." 

But  many  generations  of  schoolboys  were  condemned 
to  groan  before  educational  reformers  attempted  to 
put  into  practice  Anselm's  methods. 

IV 

From  the  establishment  by  the  Church  of  the 
cathedral  school,  we  pass  by  a  natural  transition  to 
the  universities.  Until  recent  years  it  was  custom- 
ary with  historians  to  attribute  not  merely  the 
schools  of  Europe  but  the  rise  of  the  universities  to 
the  influence  of  the  monasteries.  The  recent  re- 
searches, especially  of  Denifle  and  ,Eashdall,  have 


AND  METHODS  235 

shown  that  such  a  view  is  as  baseless  as  the  myth — 
solemnly  recognized  by  English  law  courts — which 
attributed  the  origin  of  Oxford  to  Alfred  the  Great. 
We  now  know  that  the  universities  of  Europe,  when 
not  the  result  of  "  migration,"  always  rose  in  connec- 
tion with  a  great  collegiate  but  secular  Church  j  they 
are  never  the  offepring  of  a  mon^tery.  St.  Gall, 
Fulda,  Bee,  Malmesbury,  Jarrow,  might  have  re- 
tained to  this  day,  in  new  and  changing  forms,  their 
once  proud  position  as  the  intellectual  centres  of 
Europe ;  that  they  lost  it  forever  to  later  rivals  must 
be  entered  against  them,  as  we  have  seen,  as  the  pun- 
ishment of  monastic  self-centeredness. 

We  may  best  illustrate  the  stages  of  growth  of  a 
university  by  the  history  of  Paris,  the  most  famous 
mediaeval  university  of  Europe.  We  have  first  the 
cathedral  school  of  the  Notre  Dame,  the  education  at 
which  would  be  confined  to  grammar  and  song.  But 
with  the  widening  intellectual  activity  the  curriculum 
broadened,  while  the  fall  of  Monasticism  as  the  ideal 
life  led  to  a  demand  for  the  better  education  of  the 
secular  clergy.  These  the  great  Parisian  monasteries 
of  St.  Victor  and  of  St.  Genevieve  were  reluctant  to 
admit  to  their  lectures  unless  they  would  first  turn 
monk.  In  accordance  with  the  legislation  of  Charles 
the  Great,  to  which  we  have  already  referred,  the 
chapter  appointed  certain  of  their  number  under  the 
license  of  their  '' chancellor  "  to  give  instruction  in 
theology  in  addition  to  the  usual  course  of  **  arts.' ^ 
At  first  the  school  at  Paris  had  little  repute  ;  it  was 
overshadowed  by  the  cathedral  schools  at  Chartres 
and  Laon  where  two  noted  masters  were  drawing 
students  from  all  parts.    To  Abailard,  and  the  sue- 


236        MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

cessors  he  trained  in  his  logical  method,  Paris  owed 
the  foundation  of  her  prestige.  The  width  of  Ab- 
ai lard's  genius  attracted  students  by  hundreds  from 
castle  and  town  to  the  new  species  of  tourney,  where 
the  partisans  of  hostile  principles  encountered  one 
another  in  the  lists  of  controversy  with  all  the  bitter- 
ness of  feudal  warfare. 

The  cathedral  authorities  naturally  took  steps  to 
secure  permanence  for  their  prosperity.  There  was 
ever  the  danger  lest  the  school  should  be  broken  up 
by  the  death  of  some  famous  ^'master,"  or  migrate 
elsewhere  through  the  growing  fame  of  some  new 
teacher.  Both  perils  would  be  avoided  if  masters 
and  scholars  could  be  attracted  to  Paris  by  solid  ad- 
vantages. Whether  through  foresight  or  the  instinct 
of  preservation,  the  chapter,  therefore,  flung  open  to 
all  the  profession  of  teaching  instead  of  restricting  it 
to  those  in  orders.  The  one  condition  imposed  was 
that  ' '  masters  "  should  receive  a  license  from  their 
^  ^  chancellor. "  The  chancellor,  of  course,  before 
issuing  his  license,  would  satisfy  himself  that  the 
master  possessed  the  needed  acquirements.  As  a  re- 
sult of  these  measures  we  find  that,  within  a  genera- 
tion of  the  death  of  Abailard,  the  school  of  Paris 
had  acquired  European  fame.  To  the  crowded  streets 
of  the  **  Latin  quarter,"  as  to  a  new  Mecca,  scholars 
crowded  in  their  thousands,  stirred  by  the  same  spirit 
of  impatience  with  the  older  traditions  of  Europe 
that  at  the  beginning  of  the  century  had  hurried  a 
ruder  feudalism  to  recover  the  tomb  of  its  Lord. 

A  school  which  attracted  students  from  different 
nations  received  the  technical  name  of  a  studium 
generate.     Like  the  English   ^'public  school,"  this 


AND  METHODS  237 

title  was  at  first  very  vague.  Only  gradually  did  it 
come  to  denote  a  university.  At  the  end  of  the 
twelfth  century  there  were  two  schools  which  had 
obtained  international  reputation  ;  Paris,  for  arts 
and  theology  j  Bologna  for  law.  Their  masters  were 
held  in  such  esteem  that  custom  had  granted  them 
the  right  of  teaching  in  any  school  without  fresh 
license.  This  last  privilege  led  to  important  de- 
velopments. When  in  1224  Fredric  II  founded  the 
Studium  Generele  of  Naples,  he  granted  to  its  masters 
the  jus  docendi  tibique^  to  give  the  technical  name  by 
which  this  much  prized  right  of  Paris  and  Bologna 
was  known  to  the  jurists.  The  pope,  of  course,  could 
not  submit  to  this  claim  of  his  rival  to  be  the  edu- 
cational head  of  Europe,  so  when  Gregory  IX  founded 
his  '' spiritual  garrison"  at  Toulouse  (1233),  a  bull 
conferred  on  its  masters  a  similar  privilege.  As  other 
schools  eagerly  competed  for  the  same  advantage,  it 
became  the  law  that  a  true  studium  generate  must  have 
obtained  charter  from  one  of  the  world-powers,  either 
pope  or  emperor,  preferably  the  former — the  license 
of  the  local  sovereign  was  not  sufficient  to  grant  a 
right  that  extended  beyond  his  own  dominions — 
conferring  the  coveted  jus  docendi  ubique. 

The  reader  may  ask  why  in  the  last  paragraph  we 
used  the  cumbrous  title  studium  generate  instead  of 
the  familiar  ''university."  It  were  well,  therefore, 
to  explain  what  precisely  this  last  term  represents. 
''University"  is  simply  the  common  late  Latin  term 
for  any  corporation  or  guild.  In  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  centuries  the  instinct  of  association  swept 
like  a  great  wave  over  the  towns  of  Europe  pro- 
ducing, as  a  result,  that  strong  guild  life  which  was 


238        MEDIAEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

one  of  the  most  valuable  features  in  mediseval  life. 
Everywhere  we  witness  the  struggle  of  the  *' lesser 
folk '^  (minores)  against  the  "greater  folk  ^'  (majores), 
of  the  unenfranchised  mass  against  the  "guilded" 
few.  On  the  Continent  the  struggle  was  protracted 
through  a  century  of  bloodshed.  Even  in  more 
peaceful  England  the  conflict  was  bitter  and  pro- 
longed. But  whether  in  England  or  on  the  Conti- 
nent, the  weaiDon  of  the  oppressed  was  the  same — the 
unenfranchised  united  in  "guilds"  which  slowly 
wrested  the  franchise  from  the  older  oligarchies. 
Every  such  guild  would  be  called  a  universitas  ^  for 
the  classical  word  collegium  had  already  been  ap- 
propriated for  a  special  purpose.  The  university, 
therefore,  was  simply  a  guild,  in  Bologna  of  stu- 
dents, at  Paris  of  masters,  banded  together  to  secure 
their  rights.  But  when  a  new  studium  generale  was 
founded,  the  students  and  masters  either  copied  or 
carried  with  them  the  "universities"  of  the  two 
great  mother  institutions.  Thus  the  "guild"  be- 
came so  inseparable  an  accompaniment  of  these 
schools  of  learning  that  by  the  fifteenth  century  the 
older  title  of  studium  generale  had  become  extinct  save 
in  charters,  codes,  and  other  official  documents. 

*  Perhaps  the  most  curious  instance  of  the  meaning  of  "nni- 
versity  '*  is  the  following  :  *'  When  in  1284  the  Pisans  were  de- 
feated by  Genoa,  a  large  body  of  Pisan  captives  were  kept  in 
prison  for  eighteen  years.  While  in  their  miserable  jail  they  as- 
sumed the  right  to  using  a  common  seal  which  bore  the  legend 
'  The  seal  of  the  University  of  the  Captives  at  Genoa  ' "  (Rashdall, 
"Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,"  303,  n.).  The 
reader  will  not  henceforth  need  to  be  warned  against  the  com- 
mon delusion  that  a  university  is  a  universitas  facuUatum,  an  in- 
stitution professing  universal  knowledge. 


AND  METHODS  239 

The  University  of  Paris  was  a  guild  of  '*  masters, '^ 
i.  e.j  of  those  who  had  completed  their  training  in 
arts.  The  masters  were  at  first  under  the  absolute 
control  of  the  chancellor  of  Notre  Dame  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  bishop.  He  could  not  only  grant  or 
refuse  a  license,  he  could  take  away  licenses  already 
given.  Evidently  a  guild  was  needed  for  mutual 
defense.  The  object  was  twofold :  to  protect  the 
masters  against  the  arbitrary  authority  of  the  chan- 
cellor,^ and  to  raise  their  emoluments  by  restricting 
new  licenses,  in  other  words  by  seeing  to  it  that  the 
standard  was  maintained.  Such  a  **  university," 
which  at  first  differed  but  little  from  a  superior 
trades  union,  in  its  beginnings  had  no  legal  rights 
whatever.  Like  our  modern  trades  unions,  it  slowly 
won  its  emancipation  in  spite  of  law,  chiefly  by  a 
free  use  of  boycotting,  furthered  by  appeals  to  the 
papal  authority  which  in  this  matter  corresponded 
to  Parliament  or  Congress.  Eome's  help  was  readily 
given.  She  was  ready  at  all  times  to  exert  her  claims 
to  local  interference.  But  we  may  also  credit  her 
with  loftier  motives.  For  from  the  first  the  papacy 
— with  that  unerring  instinct  which  marks  its  earlier 
history,  sided  with  the  power  of  the  future  against 
the  efforts  of  a  local  hierarchy  to  keep  education  in 
leading  strings.  Eome  saw  that  it  would  avail  her 
nothing  that  she  had  crushed  the  independence  of 

'  At  Oxford  the  chancellor  soou  ceased  to  be  the  oflScer  of  his 
distant  bishop  at  Liucoln,  and  became  one  in  interest  with  the 
university.  This  development  was  assisted  by  the  fact  that  in 
the  early  years  of  the  university  the  see  of  Lincoln  was  vacant, 
and  that  the  first  chancellor  of  Oxford,  the  illustrious  Grosseteste, 
was  not  the  man  to  be  the  tool  of  anybody. 


240        MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

the  bishops,  if  the  control  of  the  new  learning  should 
pass  into  their  hands.  So  when  in  1212  the  chan- 
cellor of  Paris,  as  the  bishop's  representative,  sought 
to  compel  all  masters  to  take  an  oath  of  obedience  to 
himself,  Innocent  III  interposed.  When  at  a  later 
date  bishop  and  chancellor  again  attempted  to 
strangle  the  growing  guild,  furbishing  up  for  the 
purpose,  like  English  manufacturers  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century,  an  old  ordinance 
against  ^*  conspiracies, ''  Gregory  IX  again  stepped 
in.  Henceforth  at  Paris,  even  more  so  at  Oxford, 
the  guild  was  free  to  develop  on  its  own  lines.  The 
bishop  had  lost  the  control  of  his  own  studium ;  the 
*' university  "  had  usurped  both  name  and  power. 

At  Bologna  the  university  was  a  guild  not  of  mas- 
ters, but  of  students.  For  the  origin  of  this  extra- 
ordinary difference  we  must  look  to  the  different 
conditions  which  gave  rise  to  the  intellectual  move- 
ment in  Italy.  In  the  north  of  Europe  the  complete 
overthrow  by  barbarian  or  Saracen  of  the  old  Roman 
civilization  had  flung  upon  the  Church  the  task  of 
educating  the  people.  But  in  Italy  the  educational 
traditions,  and  to  some  extent  even  the  educational 
machinery,  of  her  old  Eoman  civilization,  still  sur- 
vived. In  France  until  after  the  times  of  Abailard 
all  teachers  were  ecclesiastics,  at  any  rate  were 
*'  clerks."  But  in  Italy,  where  the  race  of  lay  teach- 
ers never  died  out,  they  were  not  subject  more  than 
other  laymen  to  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction,  nor  en- 
titled like  their  brethren  of  Paris  to  the  special  privi- 
leges of  the  priestly  caste.  At  Bologna,  in  fact,  the 
*' doctor"  was  simply  a  private  adventurer — in  this 
resembling  the  sophist  of  ancient  Athens,  or  the  Cam- 


AND   METHODS  24I 

bridge  "coach"  of  to-day — whom  a  certain  nuniber 
of  students  hired  for  their  instruction.  Each  doctor 
lectured  in  his  own  room,  and  depended  for  his  fees 
and  pupils  upon  his  reputation  or  powers  of  canvass- 
ing. In  Italy  the  chief  factor  in  the  transformation 
of  such  a  school  into  a  studium  generate  was  not  so 
much  the  Church  as  the  rivalry  of  the  same  vigorous, 
civic  spirit  which  in  other  spheres  has  shed  immortal 
lustre  on  Florence,  Genoa,  and  Venice.  As  an  illus- 
tration of  this  independence  of  the  Church  we  may 
note  that  in  Eome  for  all  practical  purposes  no 
mediaeval  university  existed.  Higher  education  in 
Italy,  both  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  at  the  Eenais- 
sance,  if  not  in  open  antagonism  to  the  Church,  yet 
possessed  none  of  the  devout  spirit  so  characteristic 
of  the  North.  Humanism  in  Italy  has  always  been 
tinged  with  ancient  paganism,  though  a  pagan  dis- 
position seldom  prevented  an  Italian  from  counting 
himself  a  good  churchman. 

Of  more  weight  in  the  formation  of  the  student- 
universities  of  Italy  was  the  nature  of  the  chief  study. 
At  Paris  the  military  ardour  of  the  North  manifested 
itself  in  tournaments  of  logic.  But  the  key  to  the 
history  of  Lombard  cities  and  Lombard  schools  lies — 
as  we  have  already  noted  in  a  previous  lecture — in 
the  recognition  of  the  continued  existence  through 
the  darkest  ages  of  the  old  Eoman  system  of  juris- 
prudence, though  much  mixed  with  barbarian  addi- 
tions. When  the  age  of  iron  gave  place  to  order, 
Eoman  law,  especially  the  newly  discovered  juris- 
prudence of  Justinian,  was  bound  to  reassert  itself, 
while  appeal  to  its  authority  was  furthered  by  the 
struggle  between  Empire  and  Papacy.     In  a  land 


242        MEDIAEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

more  conscious  than  any  other  of  the  root- ideas  of 
the  Holy  Eoinan  Empire,  both  sides  anxiously 
searched  in  the  records  of  the  past  for  the  evidence 
of  their  claims.  The  schools  of  Paris  were  distracted 
by  endless  questionings  concerning  the  reality  of 
universal  ideas ;  for  Italy  the  solution  of  the  vital 
problems  of  liberty  and  imperial  politics  lay  in  the 
study  of  law,  both  Koman  and  Canon.  Now  the  law 
is  a  superior  faculty.  While,  therefore,  ''  the  artist  '^ 
of  Paris  or  Oxford  was  a  mere  lad  whom  the  masters 
compelled  to  sit  on  the  floor — the  straw  was  changed 
only  twice  a  year  ! — **  that  all  occasion  of  pride  may 
be  taken  away,"  who  herded  in  bare  lodging  houses 
run  by  one  of  their  masters,  the  student  of  Bologna 
was  a  man,  an  "artist"  already  of  some  other 
studium  generale^  who  for  the  sake  of  advancement  in 
Church  or  State  had  found  it  necessary  to  obtain  a 
knowledge  of  Eoman  or  ecclesiastical  jurisprudence. 
Such  men  were  of  all  nations  and  from  many  differ- 
ent cities  and  dwelt  in  their  own  hired  lodgings. 
Nor  were  they  adventurous  lads  for  whom  politics 
had  little  meaning  save  the  riot  of  town  and  gown, 
the  breaking  of  heads  in  the  battle  of  "nations." 
They  were  generally  men  of  rank  in  Church  or  State, 
men  who  could  not  afford  to  be  outlawed,  though 
often  given  as  much  as  the  youthful  artist  to  drink- 
ing and  dicing.  Now  in  Italy,  as  in  ancient  Greece, 
the  citizens  of  one  town  had  no  civil  rights  in  an- 
other, for  Eepublic  and  Empire  never  gave  birth  to 
an  abiding  Kingdom  of  Italy  until  times  well  in  the 
memory  of  some  of  my  hearers.  The  students,  there- 
fore, of  Bologna  found  themselves  compelled  to  form 
themselves  into  a  guild,  not  so  much  to  defend,  like 


AND  METHODS  243 

the  "masters''  of  Paris,  their  educational  rights 
against  the  chancellor,  much  less  to  resist  the  en- 
croachments of  their  lay  teachers,  as  with  the  object 
of  creating  an  artificial  citizenship  which  should  save 
them  from  the  perils  of  the  alien,  and  give  them  the 
law  and  tribunals  of  a  privileged  caste. 

To  the  reader  acquainted  only  with  universities  on 
the  model  of  Paris,  a  '^ university  of  students"  will 
seem  an  extraordinary  anomaly.  It  may  be  of  inter- 
est, therefore,  to  note  the  development  of  this  rival 
type.  The  *' university  "  or  the  Guild  of  Foreign 
Students  at  Bologna  did  not  at  first  seek  a  charter 
any  more  than  an  international  or  intercollegiate 
rowing  club  at  Oxford  or  Harvard.  Like  any  other 
club,  they  passed  their  own  rules,  none  of  which  had 
legal  validity.  But  by  threats  of  migration  they 
wrung  the  recognition  of  these  by-laws  as  statutes, 
binding  alike  on  citizen  and  student.  By  judicious 
boycotting  they  also  acquired  control  of  all  matters 
relating  to  landlords,  and  over  all  tradesmen  engaged 
in  the  production  of  books,  whereas  in  Oxford  and 
Paris  these  matters  passed  into  the  control  of  the 
university  of  masters.  By  slow  steps  we  see  the  ex- 
pansion of  the  power  of  the  "rector  "  or  elected  head 
of  the  students  until  he  was  formally  recognized  as 
ranking  in  Bologna  above  all  cardinals  and  arch- 
bishops. Two  liveried  servants  testified  to  his  dig- 
nity, while  during  his  year  of  office  he  could  on  no 
account  leave  the  city  without  giving  security  for  his 
return.  At  his  inauguration  he  must  provide  a  ban- 
quet for  all  the  students,  the  wine  at  which  must  be 
of  a  certain  quality.  Another  expense  was  a  tourna- 
ment, for  which  he  furnished  two  hundred  spears. 


244        MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

Bat  if  the  financial  burdens  of  the  rector  were  excess- 
ive, the  powers  he  wielded  as  the  representative  of 
the  students  were  almost  unlimited.  All  doctors 
were  compelled  to  swear  obedience  to  the  regulations 
of  the  Student  University.  If  a  professor  desired 
leave  of  absence,  he  must  obtain  it  from  his  pupils ; 
if  through  lack  of  ability  he  failed  to  draw  five  to  his 
lectures,  he  was  treated  as  absent  and  heavily  fined  ; 
a  weapon  of  use  against  other  than  incapable  teach- 
ers. He  was  fined  also  if  not  punctual,  or  failed  to 
finish  to  the  tick  of  the  clock.  To  postpone  a  diffi.- 
culty  to  the  end  of  the  lecture,  when  opportunity  of 
heckling  could  not  be  given,  was  an  unpardonable 
offense.  The  law  texts  were  divided  into  portions 
called  punctaj  and  a  time-table  made  to  which  the 
doctor  must  keep.  ^Nevertheless,  such  was  the  repu- 
tation of  a  *' master"  of  Bologna,  so  valuable  also 
the  emoluments,  that  we  find  no  lack  of  candidates. 
Space  forbids  us  from  entering  into  details  of  the 
**  rigorous  and  tremendous  examination,"  and  the 
ceremonial  whereby  he  was  made  free  of  the  Doctors' 
Guild  :  how  he  delivered  his  thesis  in  the  cathedral, 
how  the  gold  ring  was  put  on  his  finger,  and  the 
book  of  the  law  into  his  hands,  how  he  was  then  es- 
corted through  the  town  in  triumph,  preceded  by  the 
three  university  pipers  and  the  four  university 
trumpeters,  and  how  he  ended  the  day  by  giving  a 
banquet  to  his  colleagues,  not  forgetting  the  students. 
Whether  the  '^  university  "  was  a  guild  of  masters 
or  of  students,  its  freedom  was  won  by  the  same 
means.  Our  universities  rest  for  their  privileges 
and  immunities,  not  so  much  on  the  Church  as  on 
the   new  power   that  was  sapping    feudalism    and 


AND   METHODS  245 

destroying  tyranny — the  power  of  the  purse.  The 
Church,  it  is  true,  put  these  immunities  into  form, 
but  it  was  the  purse  that  won  them.  The  schools  of 
Bologna  and  Paris  brought  in  no  small  gain  to  the 
craftsmen  of  those  cities ;  neither  magistrates  nor 
court  dare  do  anything  that  would  drive  them  away. 
In  vain  did  the  authorities  seek  by  various  devices 
to  crush  the  guilds,  and  as  a  first  step  to  take  away  the 
right  of  migration.  Such  measures  were  wholly  in- 
operative, for  the  ^^university  "— as  apart  from  the 
various  colleges  in  which  the  student  lived— had 
neither  buildings,  nor  wealth,  nor  other  hostages  of 
fortune.  Its  sole  property,  the  common  chest  and 
seal,  was  kept  for  safety  in  the  sacristy  of  some 
friendly  and  inviolable  convent;  for  its  '* congrega- 
tions'' it  would  borrow  a  neighbouring  church. 
"With  these  powers  of  flight,  in  the  days  before  the 
colleges  had  been  established,  when  men  still  lived  in 
hired  hostels,  its  wings  could  not  be  clipped,  more 
especially  as  every  city  of  Europe  would  have  wel- 
comed with  valuable  privileges  such  profitable  guests. 
Universities,  in  fact,  fattened  upon  their  misfortunes  ; 
riots  generally  ended  in  new  charters  and  further 
powers  ;  "  migrations  "  Mn  triumphant  returns  with 
sheafs  of  bulls  and  privileges.  But  with  the  rise  of 
stately  colleges  the  older  turbulence  and  stir  of  life, — 
democracy  first  discovering  itself— gave  place  to  the 

*  To  the  frequent  "  migrations  "  Europe  owes  the  majority  of 
her  older  universities.  Oxford  (probably)  by  a  migration  from 
Paris  about  1169  ;  a  brawl  at  Oxford  in  1209  led  to  a  migration 
to  Cambridge.  Similar  migrations  to  Reading,  Stamford,  and 
Northampton,  unfortunately,  ended  in  failures  to  establish  new 
university  centres. 


246        MEDIAEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

ordered  and  stately  universities  to  which  we  now  are 
accustomed.  Migrations  and  other  outbursts  of  the 
untutored  spirit  were  no  longer  possible  when  every 
scholar  was  obliged  to  live  in  some  hall,  hostel  or  en- 
dowed foundation  under  the  care  of  some  member  of 
the  university. 

In  the  rise  of  the  universities  the  student  can  dis- 
cern mediaeval  internationalism,  so  largely  the  out- 
come of  the  Catholic  Church,  strangely  blended  with 
the  growing  consciousness  of  the  new  nationalism 
that  in  the  long  run  proved  so  fatal  to  the  papacy. 
Of  these  two  forces  we  have  a  striking  illustration  in 
the  history  of  the  University  of  Prague.  Up  to  the 
middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  Germany  possessed 
no  university  at  all.  Through  political  causes — in 
part  depending  upon  the  fascination  of  the  imperial 
idea,  in  part  upon  the  change  made  from  its  old 
Teutonic  jurisprudence  to  that  of  Justinian — German 
scholars  were  chiefly  attracted  by  the  study  of  the 
law.  They  therefore  crossed  the  Alps  to  Bologna. 
There  their  special  privileges  gave  rise  to  the  system 
of  '*  nations,"  which  in  different  ways  formed  a  fea- 
ture, more  or  less  real,  in  every  university.  "With 
the  loss  of  her  more  intimate  connection  with  Italy, 
through  the  fall  of  the  Hohenstaufen,  Germany  re- 
alized that  the  old  internationalism  of  letters  would 
no  longer  supply  her  needs.  So,  in  1347,  Charles  IV 
of  Luxemburg,  King  of  Bohemia,  the  son  of  the  King 
John  who  was  taken  captive  at  Crecy,  who  had  been 
elected  to  the  crown  of  the  Empire,  founded  the  Uni- 
versity of  Prague.  There  from  the  very  first  the  new 
nationalism  manifested  itself  in  constant  quarrels  be- 
tween the  Czechs  and  Germans.     That  an  opinion 


AND  METHODS  247 

was  embraced  by  the  Teutons  was  sufiacient  reason 
for  its  rejection  by  the  Czechs.  The  Teutons  were 
Nominalists  ;  the  Czechs  must  needs,  therefore,  be 
the  champions  of  Eealism.  When  therefore,  in  1403, 
the  condemned  doctrines  of  the  realist  Wyclif  were 
defended  by  the  realist  rector,  John  Hus,  the  Ger- 
mans flung  themselves  into  the  defense  of  Eome  with 
all  the  ardour  begotten  of  national  hatred  united 
with  the  odium  philosophicum.  The  end  of  inter- 
nationalism was  seen  when,  in  1409,  the  Germans  at 
Prague,  to  the  number  of  five  hundred  ^  migrated  in 
a  body  and  founded  the  strictly  Teutonic  university 
of  Leipzig.  The  old  international  life,  the  strength 
of  which  was  due  to  the  consciousness  of  unity  and 
solidarity,  when  the  students  of  Oxford  and  Paris, 
especially  the  more  distinguished  friars,  journeyed 
freely  from  one  to  the  other,  had  given  place  to  the 
new  national  but  divisive  spirit  so  triumphant  in  the 
Eeformation.  Henceforth  every  separate  state  sought 
to  establish  its  own  universities,  and  by  pains  and 
penalties  to  forbid  its  students  from  journeying  to 
foreign  centres.  But  a  triumphant  spirit  of  national- 
ism in  what  should  be  the  republic  of  letters  leads 
inevitably,  as  alas !  we  have  seen  recently  to  our 

^  The  numbers  as  a  mle  have  been  greatly  exaggerated,  and 
are  usually  given  even  by  historians  who  should  know  better  as 
5,000.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as  Erler  has  shown  by  his  publica- 
tion of  the  Leipzig  rolls,  the  total  entrances  at  Leipzig  were  507. 
"Wyclif  speaks  of  "  once  sixty  thousand  students  "  at  Oxford. 
How  absurd  the  figure  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  the 
population  of  Oxford  "  town,"  over  fourteen  years  of  age,  in  1379 
was  but  2,035.  Probably  even  at  Paris  the  students  were  never 
more  than  six  thousand.  By  1438  they  had  fallen  off  at  Oxford  to 
a  thousand,  a  number  still  further  reduced  by  the  Reformation. 


248        MEDIEVAL  EDUCATIONAL  IDEALS 

sorrow,  to  the  warring  conflict  of  nationalism  in 
other  spheres.  Europe  and  America  must  revive 
in  a  new  form  the  old  university  internationalism  of 
the  early  Middle  Ages,  as  the  first  step  in  the  inaugu- 
ration of  a  new  age  in  which  nations  shall  better 
understand  and  respect  each  other's  different  ideals. 

We  must  bring  these  lectures  to  a  close.  We  have 
touched  merely  the  fringe  of  an  inexhaustible  and 
fascinating  subject.  In  reality  the  secret  of  the 
mediaeval  Church  must  always  remain  unexpressed, 
since  to-day  it  is  incapable  of  expression.  With  all 
its  defects — and  the  reverse  side  of  the  page  may  well 
fill  us  with  amazement  and  indignation — the  medi- 
aeval Church  and  the  task  she  accomplished  presents 
a  noble  spectacle  of  moral  grandeur.  Pages  of  her 
history  are  written  in  letters  of  living  light,  of  more 
than  golden  glory.  Where  can  we  point  to  a  sacrifice 
so  deep,  so  abiding,  so  sacred  as  that  of  her  sons? 
Who  have  climbed  to  higher  peaks  of  spiritual  ex- 
perience? We  may  condemn  the  claims  of  her 
papacy  as  unjustifiable  in  origin,  impossible,  nay 
hurtful,  in  execution,  yet  cannot  but  admire  the 
earnestness  with  which  the  great  pontiffs  believed 
themselves  to  be  the  minist<ers  of  a  higher  than  human 
righteousness.  We  may  despise  the  theology  of  her 
saints,  but  we  cannot  deny  that  they  had  learned  the 
secret  of  the  Cross.  We  may  mourn  over  their 
superstition,  but  cannot  refuse  that  they  had  an 
anointing  from  the  Holy  One.  We  may  point  out 
the  depth  of  their  errors,  their  limited  vision,  their 
rude  methods,  their  warped  ideals,  but  these  things 
are  but  the  rough  externals  which  veil  but  do  not 


AND   METHODS  249 

conceal  the  inward  nobleness  of  their  characters. 
That  they  without  us  should  not  be  made  perfect  is 
not  the  condemnation  of  their  hope,  but  the  provi- 
dential law  of  evolution.  Consider! ug,  therefore, 
the  issue  of  their  life,  let  us  imitate  their  faith  : 

Jesus  Christ 
The  same  yesterday ,  to-day  ^  and  forever. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


SERMONS—LECTURES— ADDRESSES 

JAMES  L.  GORDON,    P.P. 

AU'8  Love  Yet  All's  Law 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

''Discloses  the  secret  of  Dr.  Gordon's  eloquence — fresh, 
and  intimate  presentations  of  truth  which  always  keep  close 
to  reality.  Dr,  Gordon  also  seems  to  have  the  world's  litera- 
ture at  his  command.  A  few  of  the  titles  will  give  an  idea 
of  the  scope  of  his  preaching.  'The  Law  of  Truth:  The 
Science  ©f  Universal  Relationships';  'The  Law  of  Inspiration: 
The  Vitalizing  Power  of  Truth';  'The  Law  of  Vibratian'; 
'The  Law  of  Beauty:  The  Spiritualizing  Power  of  Thought'; 
The  Soul's  Guarantee  of  Immortality." — Christian  Work. 
BISHOP  tRANCIS  J.  McCONNELL         Cole  Lectures 

Personal  Christianity 

Instruments  and  Ends  in  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
l2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

The  latest  volume  of  the  famous  "Cole  Lectures"  delivered 
at  Vanderbilt  University.  The  subjects  are:  I.  Ihe  Per- 
sonal in  Christianity.  II.  The  Instrumental  in  Christianity. 
III.  The  Mastery  of  World-Views.  IV.  The  Invigoration 
of  Morality.  V.  The  Control  of  Social  Advance.  VI. 
"Every  Kindred,  and  People,  and  Tongue." 
NEWELL  DWIGHT  HILLIS,  P.P. 

Lectures  and  Orations  by  Henry  Ward 
Beecher 

Collected  by  Newell  Dwight  Hillis.     i2mo,  net  $1.20. 

It  is  fitting  that  one  who  is  noted  for  the  grace,  finish  and 
elequence  of  his  own  addresses  should  choose  those  of  his 
predec«ss«r  which  he  deems  worthy  to  be  preserved  in  a 
bound  volume  as  the  most  desirable,  the  most  characteristic 
and  the  most  dynamic  utterances  of  America's  greatest  pulpit 
orator. 

W,  L.  JV ATKINSON,  P.P. 

The  Moral  Paradoxes  of  St.  Paul 

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"These  sermons  are  marked,  even  to  greater  degree  than 
is  usual  with  their  talented  preacher,  by  clearness,  force  and 
illustrative  aptness.  He  penetrates  unerringly  to  the  heart 
of  Paul's  paradoxical  settings  forth  of  great  truths,  and  il- 
lumines them  with  pointed  comment  and  telling  illustration. 
The  sermons  while  thoroughly  practical  are  garbed  in  strik- 
ing and  eloquent  sentences,  terse,  nervous,  attention-coni« 
pelling." — Christian   World. 

LEN  G,  BROUGHTON,  P.P. 

The  Prodigal  and  Others 

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"The  discaurses  are  vital,  bright,  interesting  and  helpiul. 
It  makes  a  preacher  feel  like  preaching  once  more  on  this 
•xhaustless  parable,  and  will  prove  helpful  to  all  young  people 
■ — and  older  ones,  too.  Dr.  Broughton  does  not  hesitate  to 
Biake  his  utterances  striking  and  entertaining  by  the  intro- 
duction of  numerous  appropriate  and  homely  stories  and  illus- 
trations.   He  reache*  the  heart." — Review  and  Uxpositor^ 


CHURCH  WORK 


HARRY  F.  JVARD 

A  Year  Book  of  the  Church  and  Social 
Service  in  the  United  States 

Prepared  for  The  Commission  on  the  Church  and 
Social  Service,  Federal  Council  of  the  Churches  of 
Christ  in  America.  i2mo,  paper,  net  30c.;  cloth^ 
net  soc. 

ERNEST  EUGENE   ELLIOTT 

The  Problem  of  Lay  Leadership 

A  Companion  to  "Making  Good  In  The  Local 
Church."    i2mo,  cloth,  net  50c. 

"What  CTiristian  ideal  should  guide  our  men's  work?" 
"What  methods  may  we  safely  use  in  realizing  it?"  "What 
must  we  do?"  "What  must  we  undo?"  These  are  some  of 
the  problems  pressing  insistently  on  the  minds  and  hearts  of 
ministers  and  religious  leaders  of  the  present  day.  This 
timely  book  of  Mr.  Elliott's  suggests  some  eminently  workable 
methods  of  awakening  the  interest  of  men,  some  lines  of 
study  by  which  it,  is  hoped,  they  may  advance  materially  in 
the  knowledge  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  together  with  some 
"pointers"  for  such  as  may  aspire  to  leadership.  The  pro- 
grams suggested  are  not  theoretical.  All  have  been  tried,  in 
whole  or  in  part,  in  some  local  church  with  profit  and  success. 

HARLAN  L.  FEEMAN       Prof,  of  Practical  Theolo^  West- 
■  minster  Theological  Seminary 

The  Kingdom  and  the  Farm 

The  Problem  of  the  Country  Church.   Cloth,  net  75c. 

In  compact  form  this  timely  book  presents  the  problem  of 
the  country  church  and  its  attendant  difficulty.  Dr.  Feeman 
was  born  on  a  farm,  knows  his  subject  well  and  writes  with 
precision  and  authority.  His  suggestions  have  vision,  breadth 
and  sanity  and  offer  a  real  scientific  study  of  this  vastly  im- 
portant subject. 

D.  C.  TREMAINE 

Church  Efficiency 

A  Study  of  Methods.  i6mo,  cloth,  net  50c 

A  plan  of  procedure  whereby  methods  ©f  business  efficiency 
may  be  applied  to  the  work  of  the  churca.  Mr,  Tremaine  is 
a  layman  and  what  he  here  presents  is  the  result  of  special 
and  careful  study.  Most  of  his  suggestions  have  already 
been  adopted  and  none  are  submitted  untried.  The  con- 
clusions are  calculated  to  help  lift  the  burdens  of  pastors, 
and  in  solving  some  of  the  problems  of  church  life  and  ac- 
tivity. 


HOMILETICS  AND  CHURCH  WORK 


CHARLES  SILVESTER  HORNE  Yale  Lectures  ok 

'  Preaching 

The  Romance  of  Preaching 

With  an  Introduction  by  Charles  R.  Brown,  D.D., 
Dean  of  Yale  Divinity  School,  and  a  Biographical 
Sketch  by  H.  A.  Bridgman,  Editor  of  The  Congre- 
gationalist.    With  Portrait.    i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

"From  the  days  when  Henry  Ward  Beecher  gave  the  first 
series  of  lectures  on  the  Lyman  Beecher  Foundation  in  Yale 
University  .  .  .  the  task  of  inspiring  young  ministers  to 
nobler  effort  in  their  high  calling,  has  been  well  performed. 
But  among  all  the  lecturers  few  have  ever  so  gripped  the 
divinity  students,  the  larger  audience  of  pastors  in  active 
service,  as  did  Silvester  Home.  The  intellectual  distinction 
vrkich  marked  his  utterances,  the  fine  literary  form  in  which 
they  were  phrased,  the  moral  passion  which  gave  to  their 
delivery  that  energy  which  belongs  to  words  which  are  'spirit 
and  life,'  together  with  the  rare  spiritual  insight  displayed 
all  combined  to  make  notable  the  service  rendered  by  Mr. 
Home  to  Yale  University." — Charles  R.  Brown,  D,D.,  Dean, 
of  Yale  Divinity  School. 

The  last  message  of  a  leader  of  men, 

BISHOP  THOMAS  B.  NEELY,  Of  the  Methodist 

'•  Episcopal  Church 

The  Minister  in  the  Itinerant  System 

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"Bishop  Neely  discusses  frankly  the  fact  that  large  num- 
bers of  strong  men  eagerly  accept  official  service,  leaving  the 
intinerant  pastorate.  He  states  the  system  itself  briefly,  but 
the  burden  of  the  book  is  a  full  discussion  of  the  bearing  of 
it  all  on  the  minister  himself.  It  was  to  be  presumed  of 
course  that  a  Methodist  bishop  would  conclude  that  'the  sys- 
tem should  be  maintained'  and  even  that  'the  appointing 
power  should  be  untrammelled';  but  it  is  none  the  less  in- 
teresting to  follow  the  argument.  We  do  not  know  any  other 
book  which  states  the  whole  case  with  sucU  eminent  fair- 
ness."— Thg  Continent. 

EDMUND  S.  LORENZ,  B.  D. 

Practical  Church  Music 

A  Discussion  of  Purpose,  Methods  and  Plans.  Netii 
Popular  Edition.    i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

"Mr.  I^orenz  has  had  thirty  years'  active  experience  with 
both  the  theoretical  and  practical  sides  of  church  music  in 
all  its  forms.  This  is  one  of  the  most  practical  books  on  the 
subject  of  church  music  we  have  ever  read.  Every  page  is 
snggestire  and  every  suggestion  is  eminently  practical.  The 
book  clogeg  with  a  worthy  appendix  dealing  with  musical  and 
hvnanological  books  worth  owning,  choice  church  music  for 
choir, md  solo  use,  and  suggestive  outlines  and  subjects  fot 
8»ns  B«rraons  and  song  services." — Advoncs, 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  FAITH 


JAMES  H.  SNOWDEN,  P.P. 

The  Psychology  of  Religion 

8vo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 

Psychology  is  one  of  the  most  rapidly  advancing  of  modern 
sciences,  and  Dr.  Snowden's  book  will  find_  a  ready  welcome. 
While  especially  adapted  for  the  use  of  ministers  and  teach- 
ers, it  is  not  in  any  sense  an  ultra-academic  work.  This  is 
evidenced  by  the  fact  that  the  material  forming  it  has  been 
delivered  not  only  as  a  successful  Summer  School  course,  but 
in  the  form  of  popular  lectures,  open  to  the  general  public. 

WILLIAM  HALLOCK  JOHNSON,  Ph. P.,  P.P. 

Professtr  of  Greek  and  New  Testament  Literature  in  Lincoln  University,  Pa. 

The  Christian  Faith  under  Modern 
Searchlight 

The  L.  P.  Stone  Lectures,  Princeton.  Intro- 
duction by  Francis  L.  Patton,  D.D.    Cloth,  net  $1.25. 

The  faith  which  is  to  survive  must  not  only  be  a  traditional 
but  an  intelligent  faith  which  has  its  roots  in  reason  and  ex- 
perience and  its  blossom  and  fruit  in  character  and  good 
works.  To  this  end,  the  author  examines  the  fundamentals 
of  the  Christian  belief  in  the  light  of  to-day  and  reaches  the 
conclusion  that  every  advance  in  knowledge  establishes  its 
sovereign  claim  to  be  from  heaven  and  not  from  men. 

ANPREW  W.  ARCHIBALP,    P.P. 

Author  of  The  Bible  Verified,"  ^'The  Trend  of  the  Centuries,"  etc. 

The  Modern  Man  Facing  the  Old 
Problems 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

A  thoughtful,  ably-conducted  study  In  which  those  prob- 
lems of  human  life,  experience  and  destiny,  which,  in  one 
form  or  another,  seem  recurrent  in  every  age,  are  examined 
from  what  may  be  called  a  Biblical  viewpoint.  That  is  to  say, 
the  author  by  its  Illuminating  rays,  endeavors  to  find  eluci- 
dation and  solution  for  the  difficulties,  which  in  more  or  less 
degree,   perplex  believer  and   unbeliever  alike. 

NOLAN    RICE    BEST  Editor  of  « The  continent" 

Applied  Religion  for  Everyman 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

Nolan  Rice  Best  has  earned  a  well-deserved  reputation  in 
the  religious  press  of  America,  as  a  writer  of  virile,  trench- 
antly-phrased editorials.  The  selection  here  brought  together 
represent  his  best  efforts,  and  contains  an  experienced  edi- 
tor's suggestions  for  the  ever-recurrent  problems  confronting 
Church  members  as  a  body,  and  as  individual  Christians.  Mr. 
B,est  wields  a  facile  pen,  and  a  sudden  gleam  of  beauty,_  a 
difficult  thought  set  in  a  perfect  phrase,  or  an  old  idea  in- 
vested with  new  meaning  and  grace,  meets  one  at  every  tura 
of  the  page." — The  Record  Herald. 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  FAITH 

LEU^IS  SPERRY  CHAFER 

The  Kingdom  in  History  and  Prophecy 

Introduction  by  C.  I.  Scofield.    i2mo,  cloth,  net  75c 

"Anything  that  comes  from  the  pen  of  this  writer  and 
Bible  teacher  may  be  accepted  as  thoroughly  sound  and  in- 
telligent in  its  presentation  of  truth.  This  is  a  study  of  the 
historical  and  prophetic  aspects  of  the  kingdom  of  God  in 
their  relations  to  the  present  age  and  that  which  is  shortly 
to  come." — Christian  Worker's  Magazine. 

REV.   D.  M.  CANRIGHT 

The  Complete  Testimony 

The  Testimony  of  the  Early  Fathers,  Proving  the 
Universal  Observance  of  Sunday  in  the  First  Cen- 
turies.    i2mo,  paper,  net  20c. 

The  author  of  "Seventh  Day  Adventism"  gives  in  concise, 
connected  form  the  testimonies  of  all  the  early  Christian 
Fathers  from  the  Apostles  down  to  A.  D.  400.  Invaluable 
to  pastor  and  people — there  is  no  other  booklet  like  it, 

C.   F.    WIMBERLY,   B.A. 

Behold  the  Morning! 

The  Imminent  and  Premillennial  Coming  of  Jesus 
Christ.    i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

R  A.  Torrey  says:  "I  am  sure  the  book  will  interest  a 
great  many  in  the  subject,  who  have  not  been  interested  in 
the  ordinary  discussions  of  the  subject.  The  book  is  one  of 
the  three  books  that  I  would  recommend  to  any  one  who 
wishes  to  take  up  a  study  of  the  subject." 

HENRY  T.  SELL.  D.D. 


Bible  Studies  in  Vital  Questions 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  6oc ;   paper,  net  35c. 

The  new  volume  of  Sell's  Bible  Studies  is  prepared  for  adult 
Bible  and  pastors'  classes  and  for  use  in  schools,  colleges  and 
private  study.  It  deals,  in  a  plain,  concise  and  constructive 
way,  with  the  vital  questions  of  the  Christian  faith  about  the 
Bible,  God,  Man  and  the  Church.  I.  Vital  Questions  About 
the  Bible.  II.  Vital  Questions  About  God.  III.  Vital  Ques- 
tions About  Man.     IV.  Vital  Questions  About  the  Church. 

EDJVARD    LEIGH  PELL 

Author  0/  ^^ Pell's  Notes  on  the  Sunday  School  Lesson" 

Our  Troublesome  Religious  Questions 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

A  frank,  earnest  inquiry  into,  and  discussion  of,  the  prob- 
lems of  religious  creed  and  conduct  which  vex  and  peiplex 
believer  and  unbeliever  alike.  The  author  displays  a  marked 
ability  to  take  up  these  questions  and  examine  them  with 
sagacity,  impartiality  and  an  optimistic,  triumphant  faith. 


ESSAYS,  STUDIES,  ADDRESSES 

tROF.  HUGH  BLACK 

The  New  World 

i6mo,  cloth,  net  $i.oo. 

"The  old  order  changeth,  bringing:  in  the  new."  To  ft  re* 
riew  of  our  changing  world — religious,  scientific,  social — Hugh 
Black  brings  that  interpretative  skill  and  keen  insight  which 
distinguishes  all  his  writings  and  thinking.  Especially  does  hd 
face  the  problem  of  the  present  day  unsettlement  and  unresfj 
in  religious  beliefs  with  sanity  and  courage,  furnishing  in  thisj 
as  in  other  aspects  of  his  enquiry,  a  new  viewpoint  and  clarw 
fied  outlook. 

S.  D.  GORDON 

Quiet  Talks  on  John's  Gospel 

As  Presented  in  the  Gospel  of  John.  Cloth,  net  75c. . 

Mr.  Gordon  halts  his  reader  here  and  there,  at  some  pre- 
cious, text,  some  outstanding  instance  of  God's  tenderness, 
much  as  a  traveller  lingers  for  refreshment  at  a  wayside 
spring,  and  bids  us  hearken  as  God's  wooing  note  is  heard 
pleading  for  consecrated  service.  An  enheartening  book,  and 
a  restful.  A  book  of  the  winning  Voice,  of  outstretched 
Hands. 

ROBERT  F.    HORTONy   P.P. 

The  Springs  of  Joy  and  Other  Addresses 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

"Scholarly,  reverent,  penetrating,  human.  The  product  of 
a  mature  mind  and  of  a  genuine  and  sustained  religious  ex* 
perience.  The  message  of  a  thinker  and  a  saint,  which  will 
be  found  to  be  very  helpful." — Christian  Intelligencer, 

BISHOP  JVALTER  R.    LAMBUTH 

Winning  the  World  for  Chri^ 

A  Study  of  Dynamics.  Cole  Lectures  for  1915. 
l2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

lliis  Lecture-Course  is  a  spirited  contribution  to  the  dy- 
namics of  Missions.  It  presents  a  study  of  the  sources  of  in- 
spiration and  power  in  the  lives  of  missionaries,  native  and 
foreign,  who  with  supreme  abandon  gave  themselves  utterly 
to  '^he  work  to  which  they  were  called. 

FREDERICK  F.  SHANNON,   P.P. 

The  New  Personality  and  Other  Sermons 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

Mr.  Shannon,  pastor  of  the  Reformed  Church  on  the 
Heights,  Brooklyn,  is  possessed  of  lofty  ideals,  is  purpose- 
ful, more  than  ordinarily  eloquent  and  has  the  undoubted 
gifts  of  felicitous  and  epigrammatic  expression.  This  new  vol- 
ume by  the  popular  preacher  is  a  contribution  of  distinct  value 
to  current  lermonic  Uteratur*", 


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The  foundation  of  modern  religion; 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1012  00016  2505 


